


in the ashes

by Lapin



Series: fire-bird [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Memories of Past Lives, Modern AU, Reincarnation, series from multiple perspectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 69,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22030645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapin/pseuds/Lapin
Summary: He’s five years old, choking on hot Louisiana air and gunpowder smoke and screams. Goodnight's five years old and he’s somehow seventeen at the same time, and he knows the exact weight and shape of the rifle in his hands, and what he intends to do with it.The seven live again, with all that that entails.
Relationships: Emma Cullen/Matthew Cullen, Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks, Joshua Faraday/Vasquez, Red Harvest & Vasquez, Red Harvest/Teddy Q, Sam Chisolm & Goodnight Robicheaux
Series: fire-bird [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773862
Comments: 85
Kudos: 236
Collections: Epic To Read List





	1. Goodnight

**Author's Note:**

> It came to me in a dream....no, real talk, I had this weird ass dream about New Mexico, and some strip motel I stayed in once, though that motel was in South Carolina and not New Mexico. I don't know. But I had an idea, is the point. 
> 
> So this will be a series, each chapter from a different character's point of view. Let's have fun, people.

Goodnight Robicheaux is born again on the fourteenth of February, Valentine’s Day.

His father is off on business. Goodnight comes early, while his mother is home. He’s told later, by the woman who takes care of him, that she was in the garden when her water broke, telling the gardener what she wanted done when spring finally came. The gardener had run inside, called an ambulance on the old landline that’s still hooked up in the mudroom even after Goody is grown. Meanwhile, his mother had sat in the grass, and the woman who takes care of him, Selene, tells him by the time she had gotten outside with some rags and water, _“You’d of thought she’d already birthed a dozen babies, she was so calm,”_ despite the fact that Goodnight is her first, and only, child. 

Her name was Rose. She’s not the same mother Goody had the first time. And he wonders, as he gets older, if she too was like him, an old soul come around again, and he was not the child she had the last time she was here. 

He’s sixteen when he finds her diary, hidden away in a drawer, probably by her. The last page written on is dated the day she died, when he was only two years old, and she was only thirty. He touches the page, and thinks of her writing, placing this little journal in the drawer, intending to pick it up and write again soon. Only she had died. Out in the garden again, when the aneurysm that had been hiding in her head burst. 

He looks up aneurysms around then, when he’s sixteen and trying to make the world make sense. All he learns is that she was probably dead before she hit the ground. Likely never knew a thing. 

It’s at that age, sixteen, when he starts thinking that maybe he ain’t crazy after all, walking around this empty house, the woman who took care of him as a child long moved on to another job, another child. He reads the journal, and what she wrote about him. _His name is Goodnight, though I don’t know how I know that. I don’t understand any of it. My daughter’s name was Cynthia, short for Hyacinth._

There was never a _Cynthia_ in this house, in this life. No, Goody reads those words and he thinks he might not be crazy, because Rose too remembered another life, another child. 

Goody is around five when he starts remembering. Another house, another mother, another time entirely. He remembers hot fields, and the bodies that worked them, the ones that mended his clothes and prepared his food. He’s five years old, and he starts crying, because he remembers seeing someone whipped until his back bled for running, and he’s too young in this life to understand the memories he hadn’t even known what to do with when he was a grown man in that one. 

He’s five years old, choking on hot Louisiana air and gunpowder smoke and screams. He’s five years old and he’s somehow seventeen at the same time, and he knows the exact weight and shape of the rifle in his hands, and what he intends to do with it. 

His father in this life has him pulled out of school when he’s nine. Goody asks too many questions, knows too much, and the teachers don’t know what to do with him. A tutor comes to the house then, and Goody understands that everything he knows is nothing he’s supposed to know, so he does what he’s told. He listens to the tutor, and takes the tests, and he walks around the big empty house, all by himself, mixed up about the life he’s living versus the one he already lived. Rich man’s crazy son; why should this life be any different?

He’s still choking on smoke when he’s twelve, but that’s the day the hand on his back and the voice in his ear takes clear shape. His body is all the wrong shape, twelve years old and thirty at the same time, his heart aching with the memories of a life that this body ain’t lived, and then -

Then there’s the hand on his back, and that voice in his ear, _“They’re only dreams, Goody,”_ and the smoke in his head clears. 

“Billy,” he says, twelve years old, sitting on the staircase and shaking, though he doesn’t know anyone who goes by that name. 

He’s sixteen years old and the memories sit in line neatly with the life he’s lived this time around. Sixteen year old Goody never really leaves the house unless his father says he can, that distant figure only home on holidays and some summer days, a face that doesn’t mesh with the one his other father wore, a face that carries a sadness he doesn’t know if his other father was capable of feeling. 

He wonders about this father the same way he wonders about this mother. If Goody is a son they weren’t meant to have together. Or maybe he just loved Rose so much, looking at Goody is just too hard. Could be both, he thinks, his mind a jumble of teenage frustration and the empathy brought from wisdom too old for him to rightly have. 

But he has the memories of a love too big to handle knocking around inside of him too, and he’s only sixteen years old.

He went by _Billy Rocks_ though, and Goody doesn’t know what to do with that. It wasn’t his real name, just the only one he had, and there’s nowhere to look. 

But along with that name, he has another; his oldest friend in the world, truer than the blood in his veins. He has Sam Chisolm’s name now; Sam Chisolm could find any man blindfolded in the pitch black of a new moon, and Goody by turn, could always find Sam. He don’t see why that should be any different in this life, when everything else is so very much the same. 

He’ll find Sam, and Sam will find Billy. 

In this life, Goody ain’t ever so much as kissed another boy, but he has the memories of another man’s mouth, and his hands on Goody’s body. He remembers sex and Billy, and this brand-new body remembers too. Remembers Billy, always by his side, and he remembers not being so damn lonely. It gets him through the worst of fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, and the worst memories of that life too.

He doesn’t think a person is meant to bear remembering dying, but he bears it all the same. _Gatling gun_ , even though he’s sixteen, and never been near one. He looks them up, sometimes, doesn’t need to, but does anyway. He already knows the sound of one firing off, and his chest knows the feeling of the bullets shredding him to pieces. 

He finds gatling guns and a hundred Sam Chisolms that aren’t the right Sam Chisolm, and he never finds one Billy Rocks, no matter how hard he looks. 

Finding Sam consumes him like the smoke that still chokes his lungs in dreams, because that’s all he has to work with. A dozen more Sam Chisolms aren’t the right Sam Chisolm, and Goody thinks his heart is breaking, taking every last piece of hope he has, because he could always find Sam, and if he can’t, maybe there’s no Sam Chisolm to find this time around, no Billy Rocks, and Goody is really, truly alone. 

Sam would be enough. If he could just find Sam, Sam would make everything as right as it could be, because Sam always made everything right. It was built right into the man’s very bones. There was a time when Sam was everything to Goody, the lifeline thrown to a drowning man, and if Goody could just find him, he could get to dry land this time too. He wouldn’t be some crazy boy locked away by his father, dreaming impossible things and pretending they were real. He’d be Goodnight Robicheaux, this time and the last time too. 

But he can’t find Sam. 

He passes his high school equivalency when he’s seventeen, almost eighteen, and one of the people that works for his father takes him to the local community college to get registered for classes. He hasn’t said one crazy thing out loud in years, and maybe his father thinks it’s just a phase that’s finally passed; an imaginative child making up another world to escape the lonely one he lived in. 

The community college is full of young people that are still older than him, and people far older, starting their lives over or trying to find better ones. Goody takes English 121 and Calculus, some basic biology and French for the first semester. He was born knowing French though, and the class is too easy and too painful all at once.

So he switches to Spanish for the next semester, makes up some excuse about his schedule that he doesn’t even need to give. The guidance counselor reworks his credits, and puts him in Spanish 111 at five pm on Wednesday nights. 

There’s only twelve people in the class, including Goody and the teacher, that first night, and when the door opens one last time, he thinks about how thirteen is an unlucky number for a party. 

Last person sits beside him for no reason, when there are empty tables open, but Goody don’t think anything of it, just moves his bags over to make more room. 

“And you would be Guillermo Vasquez, I’m guessing?” the teacher asks. 

“One and the same,” the man says. 

“There a particular reason you’re taking Spanish 111?” she asks dryly, and Goody quirks a grin down at his book. He’d heard the man’s accent too, that gentle lilt that gave him away. 

“Always room for improvement,” the man, Guillermo Vasquez, quips, and she huffs, looks back down at her roster before she starts handing out the syllabus. 

His new partner hands him his copy, and Goody goes to take it, but the man don’t let go, and finally, Goody gets a look at him. 

Goody only knew him seven days in that life, knew him when he had to be around thirty-five, not maybe twenty like he is about now, but he’s been remembering Vasquez’s face for as long as he can remember, and he’s looking at it now. 

“I’ve got the funniest feeling,” he says to Goody now, here and now, in this life, grinning at Goody like he did back then, talking about the Alamo, “that you and me are going to be friends, eh?” 

“I do believe we’re going to find plenty to bond over,” Goody replies, some mish-mash of what he’d said once, over a hundred years ago. 

First class is only fifteen minutes, a quarter hour Goody spends watching the clock and wishing the teacher would wrap it up, hardly paying any attention at all as she talks about their workbooks and going over their syllabus. But it’s just fifteen minutes, and Goody’s been waiting seventeen years now, so fifteen minutes is nothing.

Outside, in the cold January air, Vasquez offers him a cigarette, and Goody takes it. He’s never smoked in this life, not once, but his body’s been craving a memory of nicotine for as long as he can remember. He still coughs on the first hit, and Vasquez laughs at him. 

“ _Dios mio,_ ” he says, slipping back into Spanish. “I almost didn’t recognize you. How old are you?” 

“Seventeen,” Goody admits. “You?”

“Twenty-two,” Vasquez says. “Why am I older this time?” It doesn’t need an answer, and Goody doesn’t have one anyway. “Look at you, you’re adorable!” He pinches Goody’s cheek, Goody letting him. He has the memories of being touched before, but he can’t remember the last time someone touched him this time around, and his body doesn’t know what to do for a second, almost recoiling from it. But it’s Vasquez, Vasque that Goody only knew for seven days, seven days he’s been reliving for a lifetime. “We’ve been trying to track you down, but we weren’t looking for a baby.”

 _We_. 

“Who’s ‘we’?”

Vasquez has got an old Toyota pick-up truck, and Goody climbs into the cab without thinking about how he’s going to get home. It’s not like there’s anyone waiting for him there to notice him not coming in on time. The whole way, Vasquez keeps looking at him and laughing, and Goody doesn’t even care. Vasquez can laugh at him all night, and it’ll all be alright. 

He has to roll the window down with a hand crank, something he never saw in the last life or this one, the cars his father owned all sleek and new and modern. Vasquez laughs about that, too, as a matter of fact.

The air outside is cold, cuts under Goody’s hoodie, fills him up even as he smokes another one of Vasquez’s cigarettes, getting used to the taste all over again. 

“Wait, is this kidnapping?” Vasquez asks him, in a cracked parking lot with faded lines marking the spaces, surrounded by a bunch of stucco one-story duplexes. “Shit, this feels like it might be kidnapping.”

Goody shrugs. “Maybe?”

“Eh,” Vasquez dismisses, waving a hand. “We’ll call it an emergency. And we’ll give you back.”

Inside one of the duplexes, ‘we’ is Joshua Faraday sitting at the kitchen table, wearing maroon scrubs and impossibly young himself, staring at the two of them in the doorway with a bottle of beer halfway to his mouth. “What the Hell?” he asks aloud.

“Hey, Josh, how you feel about Cajun tonight?” Vasquez jokes, shaking Goody by the shoulders. 

“What’d you do, kidnap him from a pep rally?” Faraday’s already crossed the room, pulled Goody in tight for a hug he returns, trying to breathe, trying to accept this is happening. He’s not crazy. He’s not. “Holy shit, look at him! He’s a baby!” He holds Goody at arm’s length, and _God_ , but Faraday’s so young too, only as old as Vasquez maybe, but still Joshua Faraday, Vasquez and him still tall men, when they were almost giants back then, back in that life. 

They won’t give him a beer, but Vasquez shares his cigarettes. “You’re almost eighteen,” he reasons. 

“Yeah, might as well get a head start on cancer,” Faraday says, despite the fact he takes a hit off Vasquez’s. “Honestly, I’ll take the dynamite again. Quick, takes you out. You don’t feel a thing.” 

And there comes the question Goody’s never known the answer to; “What happened?”

“Unlike you two idiots, I lived,” Vasquez says. “I mean, I got shot, yeah, but I lived.” He takes a sip of his beer, and rests his elbows on the table. “Denali got Jack. And Josh here died taking out the gun. But he was too late to save you, or Billy.” Had he known that? No. The last thing he remembers is Billy laughing at him, something, some joke. Then there was just the gun firing, the bullets, the pain, and darkness. “Sam, me, and Red Harvest, we made it out. So did Emma, and Teddy Q.”

Beside him, Faraday scoffs. “Still can’t believe you gave my horse to fucking Teddy Q.”

“It was a hundred and forty years ago, Josh, let it go,” Vas rebukes, mild. Practiced. “We buried you in the town graveyard. Kept you with Billy.” That was a kindness, a comfort even. Not that Billy had died that day too; there was only pain there. But knowing that they’d been allowed to be together in death, that was. “Sold your horses, and all your gear though.”

Ain’t no blame to be given for that. They’d been good horses, especially his own soft-mouthed mare. And their gear wouldn’t have been much good to the three left. Both Billy and him had been smaller men on all counts. 

Vasquez tips his head at Faraday. “Josh’s stuff wasn’t worth nothing.”

“Vas, I swear to fucking God -” 

“You can’t get mad, it wasn’t,” Vasquez says, talking over him. “You’re lucky your fucking _loco_ horse liked Teddy Q, or the butcher would have had him.” Whatever Faraday thinks of that, and it doesn’t look good, he keeps to himself. “Anyway, I ended up sticking with Sam and Red for a couple of years, but, well, shit happens. I got on the wrong end of a bounty, took a bullet to the thigh.”

It’s surreal, to hear what happened after he died. The whole thing is surreal, sitting at this table, with Vasquez and Faraday, in this little place. “How did you two find each other?”

“Vas came into the hospital when I was on shift,” Faraday answers. “This dumbass fell off a roof. You were at least dead when you did that.”

The scrubs make some kind of sense now. “Are you a nurse?”

“Yep,” Faraday answers. “Went right into it, soon as high school was up. Pays the bills. Keeps me out of trouble. Well, it did, right until this asshole showed up. Nice to know I wasn’t a fucking lunatic, but hey, what else is new?” He shifts, sitting back in his chair. “What about you? Someone actually fucking named you Goodnight twice?”

He thinks of that journal, shut away, written by a woman waiting for a daughter she’d named Hyacinth. “Yes. Goodnight Robicheaux is on my birth certificate.”

“You even old enough to get a driver’s license?” They both think that’s funny, laughing at him. “Jesus fucking wept, is us having you here kidnapping?”

Vasquez nods. “I was kind of wondering about that.” 

“You didn’t wonder about that before you potentially committed a fucking felony?” Faraday demands. “You know I can’t get arrested, right? I could lose my license. And we got rent to pay.” 

And Goody finally puts some pieces in place. “Are you two a thing?”

“I’m the only one who will put up with his ass in any life,” Vasquez says, and Faraday shrugs. “What about you? We’ve been looking, but we figured we were looking for you and Billy both. That you two would find each other before anyone else.” Goody doesn’t know what to say that. He’s been looking for Billy, but he’s been starting to wonder if Billy’s even looking for him. _Goodnight Robicheaux_ has never been a common name. He can’t be that hard to find. “Oh, shit, Josh, text Sam.”

“Sam?” _Sam_. 

“You think Sam ain’t been looking for you?” Faraday asks, his phone out. “‘Course, none of us knew we were looking for a kid. Jesus, no wonder you weren’t in the DMV.” 

“How’d you get into the DMV database?” Goody’s tried that, actually, but hadn’t had any luck. 

“Oh, see, I’m a cop,” Vasquez volunteers. 

“Which makes your choice of actions tonight all the more fucking stupid,” Faraday drawls. 

Goody just stares at the both of them. “So you’re a nurse, and you’re a cop.”

“Yeah, well we had the benefit of remembering a lifetime of stupid ideas, so we made wise career choices this time around,” Faraday says, texting on his phone. “By, you know, making career choices in general.”

Vasquez, on the other hand, waggles his hand. “Cops get decent health insurance. That was a big factor.” 

Goody supposes that is something they have to think about in this life. Well, he hasn’t. Not yet. He’s never thought about what he’s going to do, not really. How could he, the way his head was all filled up before he even had a chance to start? “How did you find Sam?”

“It’s Sam. He found us. Well, he found Josh. Actually, he found Jack first.”

“Jack Horne?”

“No, the fucking horse.” He holds up a hand before Faraday can say anything. “We’re never getting a fucking horse, Josh, so if that damn demon is taking another trip around, he better be a cat. Or a dog. Fuck, he can be a snake, and I’ll let you have him, but no farm animals.” 

That gets Goody to laugh, coughing on cigarette smoke a little in the process, but he thinks of his mare, _Bonne Nuit_ , he’d called her, jokingly. She’d been one of many horses throughout his life, but she’d been a sweet girl, affectionate even. He’d loved her as much he would let himself with a horse back then. She’d been a good match to Charlie, Billy’s horse, the pair of them as in sync as Billy and himself had been. 

He has to find Billy. But hasn’t this been his only plan for so long? Sam can find anyone. And now Goody’s found Sam, finally. “Where is Sam?”

“New Mexico,” Vasquez says, and Goody’s heart drops. “Him and Jack are out there. Jack’s wife is from there, so that’s where they settled. Been trying to gather up the rest of us, seeing as how we’re all a bunch of fucking crazy people that think we lived out a John Wayne movie a hundred and forty years ago.”

“We were more like a Clint Eastwood flick,” Faraday argues. 

And Goody starts laughing. He drops the cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and laughs and laughs, until he feels Vasquez kneeling in front of him. And he’s not laughing, he’s crying, Goody’s crying like he doesn’t ever remember crying before, in either life, not even when he was a child. He can feel Vasquez patting his face, trying to bring him around, but he can’t stop. There’s no stopping this, seventeen years and some of living this way, always looking, always, always looking, and not being able to find anything that proved he wasn’t just _crazy_.

Years and years of it, and he’s just crying in Vasquez and Faraday’s place, and they know where Sam is, because it was real. Every minute of it was real, and this is real too. It’s all real, and that means Billy is real too. Billy is real. Goody just has to find him. 

He cries himself out, and Faraday gets him to sit down on the sectional couch, head against his knees, pressing an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel to the back of his neck. It quells the nausea that came out of nowhere, and relieves the strange, overheated feeling. “Alright, Goody, you with me?” Faraday is crouched in front of him, holding his hand of all things, and that almost makes the laughter, or maybe the crying, start again. “Squeeze once for yes, alright?”

Because he can’t think of what else to do, Goody squeezes his hand.

“Alright, good job, you’re back with us. What we’re going to do right now, we’re going to count to ten. That’s all we’re doing, we’re counting to ten.” He holds up a finger with his free hand, and starts counting off, slow and even, and Goody mouths along, his voice ripped right out of him. “That’s it, just keep counting with me,” Faraday says, all the same, and starts the ten count over. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. There we go.”

It takes a few tries, but Goody finally gets in a full breath, and it hurts, but it’s good. 

“I’m not crazy,” he rasps. 

“Only as crazy as we are,” Faraday says lightly, but his smile is tight as he looks up at Goody. “Way I see it, we’re either in a shared psychosis, or we really did live out a Western.”

“What’s a ‘shared psychosis’?” Goody asks. 

Faraday’s grin loosens up into something more genuine. “Hah, I’m the smarter one, now. I like that.”

 _Syllable_ , Goody remembers. 

“Why is Sam in New Mexico?” he asks again.

“Told you, he found Jack Horne first. They were in the Army together. Neither of ‘em were in long, only did the three years,” Vasquez explains, sitting beside Goody on the couch. “Sam’s been looking for you, though. But like I said, none of us realized you’d still be a kid.”

“But no one’s found Billy?” No, of course no one has. He was the one who found Billy in that life. “Who else?”

Vasquez clicks his tongue. “Uh, well, Sam and Jack. Sam found Josh, same like the first time.”

“He did not,” Josh says, taking Goody’s pulse now. “See, I remember, ‘cause of the distinct lack of whiskey, people gunning for my head, and the Widow Cullen leading me on a suicide mission. Nah, Sam found me at work. He was coming in to get stitched up.” He stands up straight, patting the ice pack Goody’s holding pressed to his neck on his own now. “Not long after, this asshole showed up. And kept showing up.”

“You wouldn’t fucking talk to me,” Vasquez replies. 

“Oh, gee, wonder why?” But when Josh takes the ice pack from Goody, he leans over, kisses Vasquez on the temple. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”

While he’s in the kitchen, Vasquez turns back to Goody, smiling. His face is so much younger, but it’s the same smile. “He was going to talk to me whether he wanted to or not. I wasn’t missing my chance this time, and neither was he.”

He can’t say with all honesty he knows just what Vasquez means. Goody had been dealing with his own demons that week in Rose Creek, and hadn’t been paying all that much attention to Vasquez and Faraday. What he does remember is some teasing, bordering on either outright hostility or maybe something else. Must have been something else, then. 

Must have really been something else entirely. 

“You only knew him a week,” Goody says. There are cardboard boxes and plastic totes in the living room. He hadn’t noticed them before. 

“You’d only known Billy for what? Five minutes?” 

That’s fair. Because, yeah, that’s about right. From the time Goody walked into the saloon, to Billy finishing off the last of those boys looking to make trouble for him, it had been maybe five minutes. Five minutes, and Goody had already decided he’d never seen anyone like Billy Rocks before, that he was everything Goody had been looking for out there in the territories. Had thought he was looking for himself, or maybe something like redemption, but instead he’d found Billy, and Billy had been better than either of those things could ever be. 

“You’re going to New Mexico, aren’t you?”

Vasquez nods. “I’m not really taking that class. College has a drug problem. Just Adderall, Ritalin, that shit. I was supposed to be scoping it out, seeing if I saw something.” He grins, sly, just like he was then. “Shame. I was really looking to improve my Spanish.”

“When?” Goody asks, the information floating by him like a leaf on the water. “When are you leaving?”

“Next month.” His grin slips away, and he puts a hand on Goody’s arm. “We’ve been planning it for awhile, just had to wait for Josh to get a job out there. See, Goody, we been looking for you, okay? We have. But I made Red Harvest a promise, that first time around. And Sam’s found Red. So I got to get to him. Keep that promise.”

Red Harvest had been as well-known to Goody as a sphinx; he can’t imagine what promise he might have gotten out of Vasquez that he needed to keep so badly, so he asks, “What did you promise him?”

“That no matter what, me and him were brothers. And I wouldn’t leave him alone. So see? I’ve got to get to him, now that I know where he is.” He squeezes Goody’s arm tight, so much Goody can feel his fingers through the hoodie. “Just like you got to get to Billy, I’ve got to get to Red.” 

If they’re all here, if they’ve all come around again, somehow, some way, even Red Harvest and Jack Horne, that has to mean Billy has too. Billy has to be here. Somewhere, in a world of a billion people, Billy is here again, and Vasquez is right, Goody’s got to find him. 

“How am I supposed to do that?” He’s tried everything he can do for now, but he’s got nothing to work with but Google and social media. He’s seventeen and he hasn’t found one god damn thing, not on his own. Because a seventeen year old now isn’t like it was then, when Goody was already considered a man grown by the time he was the age he is now. Now, he’s just a kid, a half-crazy kid with nothing. 

Faraday comes back into the living room, leaning against the wall. “Come with us,” he says. “When are you going to be eighteen?”

It’s January. January twenty-third, today. So less than a month. “Valentine’s Day,” he says. “I’ll be eighteen.”

“We’re leaving on the sixteenth,” Faraday says. “So get your shit together, and we’ll take you with us.” 

“I can’t just go to New Mexico,” Goody says, because he might not be crazy, but that is. 

“Why the hell not?” Faraday asks, like it ain’t nothing at all. “You got a lot going on for you, here?”

At home, the next morning, Goody skips his ten am literature class. He looks around the great big empty house, smaller than the plantation he’d grown up on the first time, but still bigger than the homes most people lived in these days. How did he repeat that part too? 

He doesn’t know anything about New Mexico. Not this time. It was still just a territory back then, and he hadn’t spent much time there. Hadn’t spent much time anywhere at all. Billy and him, they’d always been moving, looking for the next payday, and outrunning the last one. 

Wikipedia gives him some facts, and doesn’t answer any questions. It’s January twenty-fourth today. That gives him twenty days to make a decision. 

January twenty-fourth, he’s seventeen years old, and that’s the day Sam Chisolm calls his phone. 

“Vasquez said you were pretty shook up,” Sam says. “Figured I’d give you the night, let you sleep on it. Figure out how you were feeling.”

He sounds just the same as he did then. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight,” Sam tells him. “Lord, but are you really just seventeen this time? You always have to make things complicated, don’t you Goody?” 

“Does seem to be in my nature,” Goody says. “Sam, I can’t find Billy.”

He hears something in the background; a woman’s voice. “No,” Sam says, away from the phone. “Tell Jack I’m talking to Goody.” Back in the phone, he says to Goody, “Probably help if we knew what his name was. You got any ideas?” 

No, he doesn’t. “He never told me.” Billy Rocks, the only name Billy had. That’s what he’d told Goody when Goody had asked how he had come by a name like ‘Billy’. He’d told Goody that his old name, the one his mother had given him, was lost to him, and had to stay that way. Back then, he’d been far from the only person out there in the territories living under a new name, hiding from a past. “But he knows that’s the only name I know.”

“Then all we can do is hope he puts it out there, Goody. ‘Cause that’s the only way I’m going to find him for you.”

Heat pricks at Goody’s face, and he has to bite the inside of his mouth to keep his voice from cracking, when he asks, “That contingent on me coming out to New Mexico?”

“What, I’m not enough? I’m hurt, Goody.”

It’s so like Sam. So like him to joke, when it’s not really one at all. “Course you are. But what, I’m just supposed to pack up my life, get in a truck with Vasquez and Faraday of all people, and move states?”

“Most eighteen year olds do,” Sam reminds him. “Not the Vasquez and Faraday part, no, I’m with you on that, but you wouldn’t be doing anything different than everyone else your age will be doing, come August. Just doing it a little earlier.” He moves on his end of the phone, and a chair creaks. “Got Jack Horne and his wife out here. Raven. You’ll like her, I think. Found Red Harvest. Might make you happy to know you’re still older than him. He’s seventeen, just turned. An annoying seventeen year old, too. You never got a chance to know this, but he’s real mouthy when he wants to be.”

He never did get a chance to know that, no. Red Harvest was a solid, stony young man who looked too long out at the horizon when Goody knew him. Looking for something that was already gone, Goody had said once to Billy, he remembers now. And now he knows how sad that was to say, because it had already been gone, and history tells him now it never came back. 

“You looking to harbor every runaway that drops in?” Seventeen. Younger than Goody, even in this life. 

“He ain’t no runaway,” Sam scoffs. “He works on our ranch, is all. He’s living here, of course. And you’ll be eighteen, so you won’t be no runaway either.” 

No, he would not be, would he? Not this time. This time he wouldn’t be running away, he’d be running to something. Does that make it different? 

“Come on, Goody,” Sam says. “Just come try it out. See how you like it. And see if we can’t track down Billy Rocks, or whatever he’s calling himself.”

That phone call is just the first one. Sam calls him almost every day for the twenty days that Faraday and Vasquez spend packing up their things. They’re not taking much, leaving most of the furniture, not that it’s anything worth keeping. They tell him it’ll be cheaper to just buy new stuff when they get there. 

Goody spends a lot of time at that apartment for those twenty days, watching them, how they act around one another. All the insults and the teasing are still there, but that something else, that’s there too. That’s there, and it draws them together in a way Goody’s known for so long, and he’s still never kissed a boy with this mouth. He knows though. He knows, because his heart knows Billy, and he has to find him.

Three days before his eighteenth birthday, his father comes home. He’s in his office, laptop open, looking through something, when Goody steps in. 

He looks up at Goodnight. He’s not a bad man, Goody knows. But he loved Rose, and he’s never known what to do with Goody, and Goody can’t blame him. He’s never even known what to do with himself. 

“Some friends of mine are moving out to New Mexico at the end of the week,” he tells his father. “Asked me if I wanted to come with them.”

His father looks back at the laptop, then shuts it. “And do you?”

“I’m going with them.” That answers that question and the one he’s sure his father was going to follow up with. “I’ll be eighteen.” 

“I know,” his father says. “Funny thing, don’t know why, but I always figured you’d go out west eventually. Your mother used to love it out there. She only came back here because of me.” He looks around the room, then at Goody again. “What about your classes?”

“I withdrew. Money should be back in the account by now.” 

“I’m not worried about that,” his father assures him. No, that amount of money would crush some people, Goody thinks, but it’s just a drop in the bucket to his father. “Are you going to register out there?” 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, besides going to where Sam is, because that makes sense. “Maybe. After I get settled.” It’s all that makes sense right now, the most sensible thing this life has ever thrown at him. Get to Sam. “I’ve got a job waiting for me.” Not a lie. There’s a ranch, and Goody did plenty of that work in his life before. It can’t have changed that much. Some things just don’t. 

“Well, you’ve planned ahead, then, haven’t you? That’s good. Most kids your age wouldn’t think of that.” He sounds sad, as sad and lost as Goody’s felt his whole life. “Rose would have wanted you to do this. Follow your heart, as she would have said. She was always kind of romantic like that.” Sad, so sad, and Goody understands. He understands because that sadness has lived in him every day since he was twelve, and he remembered Billy’s name, and Billy’s voice, but has had to live without him. “New Mexico, huh? Wasn’t named for Mexico, did you know that?”

“Saw it on Wikipedia,” Goody tells him. He didn’t know that, the first time. Never had a reason to. 

February sixteenth, two days after he turns eighteen, he gets into the pick-up truck with Faraday and Vasquez, everything he can’t stand parting with in a duffle bag. Travelling light had been the name of the game, the first time around, but at least this time, he’s got a laptop and a bank account and a smartphone. 

He found Billy with less than that once. 

They drive all day, Faraday and Vasquez switching off at points. “We’re going to have to get you a license in New Mexico,” Faraday says, somewhere in Texas. “How the hell were you getting around before?”

“Car service,” Goody answers. 

“Damn it, why are you still some rich kid?” Faraday demands. “That’s some bullshit, right there.” 

“He’s been paying for gas,” Vasquez reminds him. 

They stay in strip motels when they sleep, Vasquez and Faraday in one bed, Goody in another. Goody sits outside some nights, smoking Vasquez’s cigarettes, looking up at the sky as it opens up the further away from Louisiana they get. The air gets colder, sharper, and Goody remembers nights with Billy, sleeping outside on winter nights, as close together as two people could get, Billy’s breath in his ear. 

_Billy Rocks_ , he puts in the search bar on his phone on those nights. 

They’re never Billy. 

He texts Sam sometimes too. Sam tells him about New Mexico, tells him about the ranch. _Goats_ , Sam tells him. _Like Spartacus_. Goody doesn’t remember much about goats, or about Spartacus for that matter, but he doesn’t mind the idea. Sam tells him about Jack, and Jack’s wife, Raven. 

He tells Sam he can’t imagine Jack Horne as a young man, and Sam sends him a picture. There’s Jack Horne, not even thirty, sitting on the porch. Already got a beard started though.

What if Billy’s older this time? What if he’s younger? 

What if what Goody thought he knew is wrong, and Billy ain’t looking for him?

“Why didn’t you want to talk to Vasquez?” he asks Faraday one day, when Vasquez is sleeping in the passenger seat, Faraday driving. “When he found you?”

Faraday sighs, checks on Vasquez. “Says a lot about a man when the last seven days of his life are the only ones worth remembering, don’t you think?” He turns the radio down, so it’s just a background hum. “I spent every day I could fucking drunk back then. Gambling, drinking, fighting, that was all I was good for. Fighting especially. This time around, figured I’d give it a shot for real.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Goody says. 

“Yeah, well, turns out it ain’t any easier when that life is still in your head. I don’t get along with other people any better than I did then, but what? I’m just supposed to let that be it for me? Seven days, and a man I barely knew? Fuck that shit. So when he turned up, I just wasn’t dealing with it. Like I said, fuck that shit.” He hitches his chin at Vas. “Guess I forgot how fucking stubborn this asshole is. Kept coming in to the hospital, and half the time, it was bullshit. And I just...I don’t know, it was a week, but we’ve got more than a week now. Don’t know how or why, don’t really care. And you people were the only ones I ever got along with in that life, so why not this one? ‘Sides, Vas has been itching to get to Red. Can’t say I missed that fucking asshole, but I guess I’ll get used to him.” 

They’re both quiet again, for a long while, Goody looking out the window, watching the terrain roll by. Take away the power lines, and it could be 1886 again, the land’s changed so little. Was Goody ever here, in this exact spot? Maybe. Lord knows, he spent plenty of his days back then drunk too, or high off what Billy could find for them. 

“We’ll find Billy,” Faraday says. “We found you. And not gonna lie, Goody, I wasn’t looking all that hard.” Goody eyes him, not sure if he’s hurt or not. “Dude, I work full-time, and I’ve got a dumbass cop for a live-in boyfriend. What do you want from me?”

Well, can’t argue with that. Goody’s been living a privileged kind of lifestyle up until now, nothing to do all day but go to class and look for the rest of them. Look for Billy. “What if Billy ain’t looking to be found this time? I didn’t exactly do right by him last time around.”

“Because Billy was stupid in love with you. You didn’t see him after you left. Trust me, Goody, if Billy’s back too, Billy’s looking for you.”

New Mexico is beautiful. Goody’s never seen snow in this life, can only remember it from the last time, but from inside a warm car instead of on horseback, there’s a serenity to it. It quiets everything in a way the world never is, least not for Goody. 

Their last night in a hotel room, he wakes up choking on smoke and blood and gore, and he can’t breathe from it, even after he’s sitting up, Vasquez asking him what’s wrong from the other bed. He can taste it in his mouth, and barely gets to the trash can before dinner comes up. 

Faraday gets him some water. That’s all they say about it. It’s all Goody wants. 

If Billy remembers, can Goody even blame him if he decides he wants to give this second chance a try without Goody? Having to constantly take care of Goody, keep him on the level? Just because Goody still needs Billy to feel like everything’s alright, doesn’t mean Billy still needs him. The world’s changed, some parts for the better. Billy doesn’t need a white man by his side just to get a room for the night anymore. 

That’s not all it was, but -

No. _No_. Goody’s done with that bullshit. Faraday’s right. There were a hundred other white men Billy could have found greener pastures with, but he stayed by Goody’s side no matter what. Followed him to Rose Creek, and what they both knew damn well were likely their graves, when he didn’t have to do it. 

Wherever Billy is, he’s looking for Goody, too. 

They hit town in the early afternoon, stop for gas and food, and keep going, to the outskirts, where the ranches starts up. Split-rail fences and telephone lines are the only things to break up rocky land, and there’s a feeling in Goody’s chest he doesn’t quite have a name for, even with all the words he knows, from both lives, when they drive down one gravel road in particular. 

_Sam_.

That’s Sam, all in black, same as always, standing on the porch. Sam, at twenty-eight, and Goody doesn’t even wait for the truck to stop rolling before he’s out, crossing the yard to Sam. 

“Look at you,” Sam says, hugging him tight. “Damn, Goodnight, look at you.” 

“Hell, look at yourself,” Goody says, and at least he ain’t crying this time. “God, Sam.” 

He can smell the goats, and something cooking inside, where Jack Horne and his wife must be. It’s cold as fuck this close to the mountains too, colder than Goody’s hoodie can keep out. But it’s _Sam_. Sam’s here, and he’s real. 

“What we lost in the fire,” Sam says to him, swinging an arm around Goody and leading him to the steps. 

“We will find in the ashes,” Goody finishes, and goes inside with him.


	2. Vasquez

It’s too early. Vasquez rolls over and checks his phone. It’s barely four, but yeah, that’s the shower running. 

“You’re seriously taking this shift?” he asks, when Josh comes out, already in scrubs. 

“Funny thing about stupid people, they fall off roofs at five am, and they need hospitals.” 

Vasquez groans and hides his face in the pillow. “Fuck you,” he mumbles. “When are you off?”

“Around one. Don’t get shot today.”

“I don’t make a habit of that.” He’d tried not to make a habit of it the last time either, but that was a different life, a different time. He still swears both places ache in the cold, despite the fact this body has never been shot. Memory is tricky like that. 

He feels Josh kiss him on the temple, and that’s another funny trick of memory. One week of his old life, and he could have sworn Josh had branded him, in that life and this one. Vas had been dreaming of kissing Josh again for so long, back then, after Josh was gone, and this time too, when he was too young to even understand it. 

So he takes the chance and grabs Josh by the back of the neck, keeping him in place, just for another minute. “Babe, I gotta go to _work_ ,” Josh whispers, bracing his arm on the bed. “We got a security deposit, and first and last month’s rent to come up with, we ever want off this little commune you’ve dragged me out to.” But he still kisses Vas, close-mouthed. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you when you get home.” 

Vas has gotten what he wanted, so he lets him go now, happy to take that advice. He’s still got two hours before he’s got to get up, and he’s going to use them. 

When his alarm goes off, he gets himself up, showered, and dressed in his new uniform. He’d gotten it back from the cleaners yesterday, so it’s still stiff, but a uniform is a uniform. It’ll soften up in a couple of weeks. Besides, last time around, he’d been lucky if he had two shirts to his name by the end, there. Emma had done her best to keep them mended for him.

He’d promised to give her enough time to fit some of Matthew’s old clothes for him, before that last bounty. She’d said they’d spent enough time wasting away in the trunk in her room. But that had never gotten to happen. Hopefully, she still got them out. They could have fit Sam, or maybe Red Harvest. 

Downstairs, everyone else is already up, even Goody and Red. Goody’s already got his laptop open, but it looks like he’s got the page up for the local community college this time, thankfully. They’ve been here two weeks already, and Sam’s been pushing Goody to do something other than help around the ranch and look for Billy. Sam doesn’t want to say it, but Vasquez knows he hasn’t had much luck himself. Wherever Billy is, he’s belly to the brush, he’s laying so low. 

Either that, or he’s like, twelve, or something. He’s not putting that in Goody’s head though. Sam will kill Vasquez himself. Got plenty of scrubland to bury his body on, too. Hell, go out and start digging, might even find some bones Vasquez himself had put there, a hundred and forty years ago. 

“When are you getting back?” Red asks. 

“Be back around four, same as yesterday,” Vas says, pouring himself some coffee. “Consistency is nice, yeah?”

Red doesn’t look at him, just shrugs, and says, “Whatever,” before he gets up and heads outside, presumably to wait for the bus, still looking at his phone. 

Watching him go, Vas waits until the door is shut behind him before he asks out loud, “How is it he talks more this time, but he’s somehow more anti-social?” He doesn’t remember being that way when he was seventeen. Either time. 

“Leave him be,” Sam says, scrolling through his own phone over his coffee. “You know how he is.” They both do, probably better than almost anyone. 

“I’m just a little impressed,” Vas clarifies, keeping the mood light. It’s too early for any emotional upheaval, and Goody’s depressed enough for everyone right now. Then again, Vas has had the displeasure of seeing it the other way around, once upon a time in the west, so to speak. Billy hadn’t been much better without Goody. 

But it’s been two weeks, and Red’s hardly talked to him at all, which, Vas won’t lie, has been a kick to the gut. Out of everyone, even Josh, he’s been trying to get back to Red the hardest, that promise weighing on him for all these years. He’s starting to feel sorry enough for himself to bring the room down himself. Raven would probably be the one leaving his body in the scrub then, though. She’s got ideas about meal time etiquette. 

Like now, standing over Goody. “What’s funny about this picture, Goodnight?” she asks. 

“I could not tell you, but I would love to listen,” Goody replies, after searching for the answer with Vas and Sam, and seemingly coming up empty. 

“See, it’s funny, because here you are, sitting at this table, playing around on your computer, at my table when people are still eating I might add, and there are the dishes, sitting in the sink.” 

Vas laughs into his coffee, Sam catching his eye, laughing too, as Goody gets up, with a “Yes, ma’am,” shutting his laptop, and going to take care of the chore.

Raven looks between the two of them. “I don’t know why you two are laughing. No phones, either. How am I supposed to enforce that with the kids if the adults don’t follow it?” 

“To be fair, ain’t none of us really kids,” Vas reminds her. 

“It’s still a rule,” she says. “And that little fact doesn’t change anything, it just means I don’t want them to think I’m targeting them. So everyone has to follow it.” She has a point there. “And I’d like Red Harvest to have a reason to talk to someone at the table.”

Sam looks at Vasquez, but he shakes his head. She’s not wrong, but neither of them have ever been able to make Red talk if he didn’t feel like it. And apparently, he doesn’t feel like talking to anyone. Not even Vas. 

It can’t last, though. Even Red has a breaking point, and they’ll reach it sooner or later. Whatever is going on in his head, adolescent dramatics aside, he’ll talk when he’s ready. Vas knows it. They’ll get there.

In any case, it’s hitting just past seven-thirty now, and Vas has to get going too. Taking off to New Mexico with a man he knew he’d love in a past life, loved in this one, to live with people he’d died with the first time, that’s all one kind of crazy; living without a paycheck is another kind he’s not willing to try. So now, he puts whatever he’s feeling about Red aside, finishes breakfast, grabs the keys, and goes to work. 

“Ain’t going to be much for you to do. It’s mostly speed traps out here,” the sheriff tells him, sitting in the passenger seat while Vas drives. They have Jeeps out here, but makes sense, in the terrain. And while Vas hadn’t exactly liked the part of his old life where he’d been living out in the scrub, cities had never felt comfortable, in either life. Too many people, not enough sky. “Still not sure what would bring you out here, of all places.”

Plenty of sky now. It’s a beautiful morning, clear and bright. “We needed a change of pace,” Vas says. “And we’ve got family out here.” 

The sheriff raises her eyebrows, and he feels her look at him. “You’re staying out on Raven’s land, still, right? You got some Navajo in you?” 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I meant Sam and Jack. Me and my partner, we go way back with them.” Over a hundred years, and another life. A week that’s been burned into his memories for so long, a week where he found a man that had haunted him for the rest of that life and all of this one. “Sam asked if we wanted to come out here, and you know how it is. You think you want to leave home, and then you miss it more than anything.” And he’d left home over a hundred years ago, bullet in the wrong place. 

“Wouldn’t know about that,” she says. “I was born and raised here. Known Raven all her life. Couldn’t believe it when she brought that man of hers back.” Without any prompting from Vas, she keeps on in that vein, not that Vas minds. “She was working at a bar just outside the base. Then one day, just came back home with some giant half-crazy white boy in a uniform, zero explanation. Married him so fast, you’d of thought they had to get married, if you know what I mean, but…” She exhales hard, and shakes her head. “You could have knocked her daddy over with a feather. Hell, could have taken me out, too.”

Once, a long time ago, Jack Horne had talked about her, Raven. Vas had been well on his way to drunk, Jack already there. He doesn’t remember what Jack had said, not the words exactly. But he remembers the look on Jack’s face, the sadness in his voice, talking about her. The wife he couldn’t save, and the child they’d had together. 

He can imagine how crazy it all looked, in this life. But he doubts Jack or Raven cared. “You can’t help when you fall in love,” he says aloud. 

“I guess,” she says. “Seriously though, I thought for sure she had to be pregnant. Tends to be what those boys from the base do. They get a couple days off, knock up our girls. But to be fair to Jack, they don’t usually stick around. Figured it had to be because he’s all religious.”

That’s one way to put that. “Jack has an interesting relationship with God.” 

The sheriff laughs. “Jack Horne’s an interesting person all around. Can’t say I dislike him, when it’s all said and done, but I never seem to know which way a conversation with him is going to go.” Yeah, Vas can relate to that. He’s never been entirely sure just what’s going on in Jack’s head, but it does make for some fascinating conversations these days. “How do you know him? And Chisolm? You didn’t serve, did you?”

“No. There was a job, years back,” Vas says. “Can’t go into details -” Can’t tell her about Rose Creek, and over a hundred men coming down on them, the blue sky over their heads, doing something impossible, _impossible_ , “- but it bonded us tight, yeah? Made it feel like we’ve known each other all our lives.” Little joke. She doesn’t need to know why he’s smiling. 

The sheriff is looking out the window on her side now, watching for something, maybe. “Well, whatever it is, you being out there on the ranch makes things easier on me. I’m a little concerned about the situation with that kid.”

“Goodnight?”

“No, that one is eighteen. He’s out of my hands, until he does something stupid. Meant the actual minor, Red Harvest North.” She catches his expression, but misreads it. “Your friends aren’t doing anything illegal, no worries there. They’ve got guardianship papers and everything. It’s a funny situation, is all, and I always take an interest in Native kids in funny situations. Want to make sure they don’t end up being bad situations. Too many of our kids end up in them.”

That’s not something Vas can argue with, but not something he can really explain either, not without looking like he’s insane. “Red’s situation is a little complicated, that’s all.” 

“So I’ve been told.” She doesn’t seem all that impressed by that, but Vas just doesn’t have anything else to tell her. Nothing that’ll take away that caution in her expression. What is there to say? Nothing, so he says nothing, not wanting to risk giving her any ammunition. “Long as the kid’s fed and going to school, I’m not going to push. Seen that bracelet he wears, was wondering if maybe it had something to do with that. If it does, I’m not blaming the kid for going somewhere safe.” 

Vas isn’t going to say anything to that either, because that’s Red’s business, but this life is the one they need to get through this time around, and Red’s still just seventeen years old right now. And he’s got a bad feeling about where this conversation is headed. “He’s _going_ to school, right?” 

“Yeah, that was what I wanted to talk to you about.”

When he gets home, he finds Josh in their room, out of his scrubs and laying in bed with a book. Old paperback, with one of those drawings on the front. Cowboy on a horse, lasso in the air. “Taking a trip down memory lane?” 

“Swear to God, these things get more shit wrong than they do right,” Josh says, rubbing his face and closing it. “Hell, _I_ knew the difference between Choctaw and Sioux, and my experiences were mostly both of ‘em shooting at me.” He sets the book aside on the nightstand, sitting up and watching Vas now. “All of those were written in the ‘50s though. Some kind of nostalgia shit.” 

Vas strips off his belt, puts his gun back in the lockbox. They’d never done that back in that time. No, guns always had to be kept loaded and ready, in arm’s reach, at least for him. But Vas had always been running, by the end there. Even with Sam and Red at his back, Vas had always had to be looking over his shoulder. 

He’s a little insulted it wasn’t even a bounty hunter that got him. One unlucky shot, right in the damn artery, from some dumb, half-drunk cattle rustler. That had been it. Vas hadn’t even had time to have any last thoughts. “So why’re you reading it?”

“I don’t know. Can’t find any of the originals. Ones that were around when we were. I liked those. Learned to read on ‘em.” 

His back is hurting him, and he twists, trying to crack his spine. Phantom pain, maybe, brain remembering a body almost twenty years older than this one is, and all the hurts that hard living had left in it. Or maybe falling off a roof hadn’t done this one any favors. Could be both. 

Either way, he digs around in the medicine cabinet, finds some Tylenol, pops it dry. “Don’t think Jack would like you having his old exploits lying around.” Josh had liked those ones in particular, for whatever reason. Vas had stumbled across a couple of them himself, when he was on the run, usually left behind by whoever had previously been squatting in the lean-tos and shanties he’d sheltered in. 

“Nah. Probably not. C’mere.” He reaches out for Vas, and Vas walks over, lets Josh undo the buttons on his uniform so he can shrug out of it, drop it on the old chair by the bed. He hears his badge clink when it falls on the floor, but whatever. “What’s your new boss like?”

“Rivers? She’s alright.” His back still feels wrong. “She just told me something I didn't really like hearing.”

Josh pulls on him, gets him on the bed. “Yeah? What?” 

“Red’s been skipping school.” He watches Josh’s face, that little tell. It’s in the way he looks to the side for a second, mouth curling. _Damn it_. “What, did you know?” 

“He might have come by the hospital a couple of times, during what I’m pretty sure are school hours.” 

Vas groans, turns around so he’s got his feet on the floor, getting his boots off. “Josh, you can’t be letting him do that. He’s got to go to school. That’s how guardianship works, he’s got to follow the rules.” He doesn’t give in, even when Josh starts working at the spot right on the back of Vas’ neck that always tightens up bad. “I’m serious, I’ve got to talk to him.”

“No, you don’t.” He kisses Vas’ bare shoulder, staying there, his mouth on Vas’ skin. “Our names aren’t on those guardianship papers, babe. And Red’s got a lot going on in his head. Fuck, we all do. I don’t know if it’s fair for us to be telling him what to do when he’s just trying to work this out, same as us.” 

“Ain’t about what’s ‘fair’.” He grabs Josh’s hand, sliding around his waist, intertwines their fingers. “We got through school. He has to, too.” 

He can feel Josh huff. “Vas, I’m telling you, the last thing that’s going to help is another person getting in his face, telling him what’s good for him.” He sounds so damn sure of himself, which kind of pisses Vas off. Josh knew Red a week, Vas knew him for years. 

“Yeah? And what gives you that insight?”

“I’ve had a long day, and I ain’t looking to fight with you, so don’t get a fucking attitude with me, alright?” That tone tells Vas he’s treading on thin ice, here. “You’re not his dad, is what I mean. Hell, we’re both barely older than him. And that’s not counting up here.” Josh taps Vas’ head to demonstrate. “Besides, he’s talked to me some.”

Now that, that Vas can’t believe, and he’s living something unbelievable. “About what?” 

“About none of your damn business, that’s what.” 

Vas turns to look at him, his temper rolling up quick on angry. “Since when do you keep secrets from me?”

“Since they ain’t mine to tell.” Some part of Vas knows that’s right, but he’s still mad. 

“Josh, he’s skipping school. He’s not talking -”

“What else is fucking new -”

“Don’t,” Vas orders, and Josh quiets. “Don’t tell me about Red, okay? I know Red. You knew Red a week. Counting now, three weeks.” 

“Maybe that makes it easier for him to talk to me a little right now. I don’t know, Vas. What I do know, is that, like I said, he doesn’t need any more bullshit from people telling him what to do.” Josh scratches at his neck, idle tell that he’s nervous. “Vas, I’m not trying to get in the middle of you two. I just mean, this ain’t exactly easy on him. Not all of us took this well right off the bat.”

Yeah. Yeah, they’ve talked about that, but Vas, he’s just having a hard time as seeing this as a bad thing. He doesn’t understand why Red would. Things had been _so bad_ sometimes. “You think Red’s unhappy?”

“I think Red’s seventeen. Which I don’t remember being a whole lot of fun the first time around, much less the second. ‘Course, first time around, I was still stuck in that damn mine. I’ll take foster care over that, but not much else.” Hell, Vas doesn’t even remember where he was the first time around when he was seventeen. Some of those years sort of blend together. “And like I said, Red’s got a lot going on in that head of his. He doesn’t need another parent. And way you tell it, that’s not what you were to him anyway.”

Vas is watching his face, watching the little giveaways he thinks maybe only he knows. He’s known Josh a lot longer in this life than he got to in the last one, knows more about him. How he is, how he sees some things. So that’s why he says, “Nothing ever happened between me and Red, Josh. It wasn’t like that with us.” 

Josh’s reply is all bluster, but Vas can see the touch of relief there too. “I would hope not, considering how you came after me, you fucking stalker.”

“I didn’t stalk you. See, I know, ‘cause I’m an officer of the law this time, and I know what constitutes stalking.” He brushes Josh’s face with his hand, trying not to smile. He wants to still be mad at him, but it’s hard to do when Josh is making sense. “No, you were it for me, _mi vida_.”

“Don’t get sappy, it’s weird,” Josh says. 

There’s nothing to do with that but pin Josh down on the bed, using his weight to keep Josh there, there with Vas, like he’d been dreaming of when he was too young this time to even understand what this kind of love was, could be. “Don’t lie,” he says, into Josh’s ear. “You like it.” 

“So what if I do? Ain’t nothing you can do about it right now.” 

“Who says?” But Josh is probably right. It’s too close to dinner time, and Vas isn’t looking to get interrupted when he’s in the middle of something good. “You know, one day, you’re going to be so used to me saying those things to you, you won’t even think anything of it.” 

Josh doesn’t roll his eyes; Vas counts that as a victory. “That’s if you don’t fall off any more roofs, you fucking idiot.” 

“I was _pushed_ ,” Vas insists quietly. “And you said it yourself, I was fine. Just a little banged up.” It’s true. He hadn’t liked getting pushed off a roof, but he’d gotten lucky; the building had butted up against a grassy hill, and while he’d still been a little stunned by the time his partner got him to the emergency room, he’d walked away from that one with only some bruising.“‘Sides, if that asshole hadn’t pushed me, I wouldn’t have found you.”

His old captain had been yelling at him in the middle of the emergency room, tearing a strip off Vas for doing something so stupid. The dealer had run up to the roof, where the fuck was he going to go? And Vas had heard it, yeah. He’d nodded along, said all the right things, and hadn’t even thought about it, because by then, he’d already spotted Josh. Joshua Faraday, in scrubs, two beds over, right there in that hospital in Louisiana. Whole again, just like Vas, and _there_. 

He hadn’t cared about what his captain was saying. Hadn’t cared that his whole body was aching from hitting the ground, that he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, or that he was definitely in trouble. All that had just been something else, something to deal with later. He’d found Josh, and all of it had been _real_. Mexico, the warrant officer, the Wild West and Rose Creek, over a hundred years ago. 

His whole life, this time around, he’d known he wasn’t making it up. He’d known it was real. That Sam and Red, Emma and Jack, all the rest of them, he’d known they were real. That Josh was. All he’d needed was proof, and he’d found it in Josh. 

And this time, he can get it right. “Alright, enough about our burgeoning juvenile delinquent,” he says, kissing Josh on the cheek. “How was work?” Asking Josh to come out here had been a lot, he knows that. He seems okay with it, maybe even likes it more than Louisiana, but Vas just wants to check in on that. 

“People are the same kind of fucking stupid in New Mexico that they are in Louisiana. No big surprises there.” He lets go of Vas, pushes him so he gets off of Josh and moves to the edge of the bed. “They whine less though, I’ll give ‘em that. Had a guy come in today with a pole stuck through his damn leg, wasn’t even complaining, just wanted us to get it out.” 

“How’d he get a pole stuck through his leg?” Changing out of his uniform pants, Vas grabs something out of the folded laundry still sitting in the basket. Another good thing about this time; washers and dryers. Fuck, he loves clean laundry. People don’t appreciate clean clothes enough. 

“I don’t know, I don’t ask questions. That’s how you get burnout. Hate to tell you, Vas, but people are still just plain fucking stupid.” He gets up off the bed himself, grabbing some shirts out of the basket and putting them in the drawer. “Hell, think we’re still pretty damn stupid ourselves. Or, you know, fucking crazy.”

Vas hands him a stack of jeans, his own. “At least we can be crazy together. One big happy family.” He fully deserves the look he gets for that, so he doesn’t mind. “You’re really okay here? Like, we’re good? Really good?”

“If we weren’t, I never would have fucking talked to you in the first place. I would have called security.”

That might be fair. It wasn’t like Vas was going to actually cross the line, and go to Josh’s home, not back when he first found him again. So that had left the hospital. “I was genuinely injured most of the time, you know.” 

“I know, I saw the X-rays. If anything, that convinced me you needed me around to keep you alive.” 

Last time, Josh hadn’t needed much more convincing than an offer to come to Vas’ room that first night, when they’d both been pretty damn drunk and riding high on their first victory against Bogue’s men. This time, Josh hadn’t even wanted to talk to him at first. Vas had had to work for his attention, convince Josh it was worth it to try again. Convince him that this time, _this time_ , they could keep it. That it was worth the risk. “You know we got an anniversary coming up. We should hit up the places around here, see what we like.”

“How about you go, and tell me what I’ll like? I’m pulling some swing shifts for a couple of days.” Josh says, putting his scrubs in their own drawer. “You find us some decent barbecue, I’ll marry you. Been craving ribs.” 

“We’re in New Mexico, _mi vida_ , there’s plenty of good barbecue.” Vas leans over, kisses Josh again, but lets it linger. Kisses him just a little longer, resting his hands on Josh’s hips. “I’ll find us somewhere quiet, and it can be just us for the night, yeah?” The house is decent-sized, but at this point, there’s seven people here, and they’re still used to it just being the two of them. “Maybe we can drive around, see which apartment buildings we like.”

“I just offered to marry you, and you ain’t going to say anything?” 

“Last week, you said you’d marry me if I strangled Goodnight to get him to stop moping,” Vas reminds him. 

“Yeah, well, he’s still kind of depressing.” And right on cue, downstairs they hear shouting. “Let me guess, you told Mommy and Daddy about Red?”

“Who is who in that situation?” He lets go of Josh, putting his hands behind his head. Shit, he hadn’t expected shouting. “And you know what, you’re a fucking adult too, you should have said something.” 

“Vas.” The seriousness has come back to Josh’s voice, so Vas looks at him, listening. “We’re not his parents.”

They’re not. That’s true. “I’m going down there. Make sure no one kills anyone.” 

Downstairs, it’s not quite chaos, but something’s been going on. Jack’s wife, Raven, is standing at the center counter, her hands clenched into the scrubbed wood, talking through her teeth to Sam and Jack. “ - I don’t care, Jack, this isn’t negotiable -”

“It’s not about negotiating -” Sam says. 

“Was I talking to you? Are you his guardian? No? Then unless you have something useful to say, shut up.” She’s angry, but Vas thinks she might be more frustrated than anything. This kind of has been a lot to ask of her. “He needs to go to school. I understand this is hard on him, it’s hard on all of us. He’s got one more year he’s got to get through though, and I don’t care if I have to drag his ass there every day myself, he’s going. He’s not turning into one of those idiots around here that sit around and do fuck all with their lives.”

Sam shakes his head, rubbing his mouth. “It’s not that simple.”

“I never said it was, did I?” she demands.

None of that is helping anything, Vas bets. “Where’s Red?” 

“He’s outside,” Raven says, pushing her hair back behind her ears. “Which is where he needs to be, because I’m going to kill him.” She slaps her hands down on the counter hard, shaking her head. “I mean it, Jack, he has got to get in line. We’ve already got the sheriff breathing down our necks about him, he can’t not go to school. They will take him from us, do you all not get that?” 

Jack comes close to her, putting a hand on her back. “No, honey, we understand that.” 

By now, it’s moved into a conversation between Jack and Raven, and Vas knows better than to get in the middle of it. Seems Sam does too, because he steps to the side, towards Vas, pulling him along so they’re both in the hall. “Maybe you could try talking to him. See if you can get through to him.” 

The way things have been so far between him and Red, he doubts it, but he can try. He’s got a pair of boots in the mud room, along with his winter coat that he pulls on over his tee shirt. He steals one of Sam’s knit hats too, because fuck that shit about it being a _dry cold_.

Outside on the wrap-around porch, he takes a minute, letting his lungs adjust to the temperature. It’s a clear sky, a million stars dotting it, the snow reflecting the light from them and the half-full moon already high overhead. The kind of quiet only snow brings stretches out around him, only his own breath making a sound, until he steps down onto the gravel.

The world’s changed, but not so much, not out here. Out here, he feels less like he’s living between two lifetimes, short as the last one was, and as little time as he’s gotten in this one so far. 

Vas finds Red in the first place he looks. He’s close to the end of the drive, sitting on the split-rail fence, the trees casting enough shadows Vas wouldn’t have seen him if he didn’t know Red was there.

It’s so strange to see Red so young. He’s not as tall as he will be, not yet, his face not as sharp. The heaviness he’d been carrying long before Vas knew him is still there, but it looks wrong on him now. He’s too young in this life. Fuck, they’re all too young still. 

But he at least remembers being seventeen in this life, and hating it, even if he’d managed to put on a better front than Red was. Inside, Vas had been an adult already, a life lived and learned from, but people hadn’t known that, hadn’t understood. For Red, that’s got to be bad. 

“You have to go to school, or that sheriff is going to come sniffing around.” Vas says to him, when he’s close enough. 

He doesn’t really think Red’s going to say anything, and he doesn’t, not for a couple of minutes. He doesn’t even acknowledge Vas, not at first. They’d stood like this together a thousand times, before, sometimes never saying a word to each other. They hadn’t always needed to. Now though, there’s a tension Vas doesn’t quite understand. Josh is right. There’s something wrong here.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Red finally says.

“None of us asked for this.” Who would even think to do that? Vas never would have. This hadn’t really been an option presented by the priest, from what he remembered of church. “It just happened.”

“Worked out for you, didn’t it?” Red asks, quietly, but no less viciously. “No more bounty. You’ve got Faraday.” There’s something there, something more. 

Some of it, Vas knows. Waking up in a world where things had gotten even worse for his people, where so much of his culture was gone. Where he was more alone than he had been even then. None of that can have been easy on Red. 

But what can Vas say to any of that? He can’t make it better. He can’t make it right. All he could do for Red was keep his promise, and get back to his side. If that’s not enough, he’s out of ideas. “It’s never going to work for you if you don’t at least try. And that means going to school.” 

He can hear coyotes barking, off in the trees. They won’t come any closer, so he’s not too worried, digging out his pack and offering it to Red. He doesn’t take one, so Vas lights his own, taking a hit and breathing out, the action a little rough in the cold. The air’s thinner at this altitude too. Probably a good reason to quit. Just because cancer didn’t have the chance to get him last time around doesn’t mean it won’t this time. 

Finishing this pack won’t be what does it though, so no point wasting them. “Red, eventually you’re going to have to get on with your life. And start talking to me.” 

It’s not the best motivation he can think of, but it’s true. They’re not going to be able to live in silence for the rest of their lives. Vas won’t let them. Red was his closest friend that last time, and Vas isn’t letting him go, not without a fight. 

And Red had sought them out. Whatever he wants in this life, if he even knows, it involves them. 

“You knew Faraday a week,” Red says. There’s something off with his voice. “Jack’s got Raven back. Sam’s going to find Billy for Goody. So what, everyone just gets everything they want?” 

There’s a beat where Vas doesn’t know what conversation they’re having here, what Red’s getting at exactly, but then -

 _Oh._ Vas had never even thought to ask about that. He’d assumed Red wouldn’t want him to. It’s not like they’d had much reason to talk about it the first time, beyond some jokes. “What happened, Red?”

He apparently does want to talk about it now. Has probably been needing to, this whole time, and Vas wasn’t here. And when he got here, he didn’t even ask. “He died. I wasn’t there. They buried him while I was gone.” Even in this light, Vas can see how hard he’s gripping the fence, his knuckles pale. 

Vas drops his cigarette in the snow, and comes close enough to touch Red, putting a hand on the back of his neck and bringing their temples together. It says a lot about just what Red’s been going through that he lets Vas do it, doesn’t move away, leans into him even. “Red, _mijo_ , I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It was _my fault_ ,” Red hisses, shaking.

They hadn’t talked about it then. It wasn’t the kind of thing men talked about, _could_ talk about. But Vas wasn’t stupid. 

Rose Creek had been their home, after the fight. They’d wintered there, rested there between jobs. It was the only safe place for Vas, the only place men like them could be sure of room and board without someone to vouch for them. And he’d seen it, as it was happening, the way Red Harvest sought out Teddy Q., the way he watched him. It had been good for Red, Vas had thought. To have someone beyond Sam and him. To have a home to come back to. 

“When?”

“Two years after you died. Maybe.” He turns his head, but Vas doesn’t move. He knows Red, even in this life, all these years apart. “I knew it was dangerous for him. Being with me. I just…” Vas stays close, lets Red keep his weight on Vas. He can feel him shaking, and he _knows_. He knows what it’s like. To lose someone, to lose _everything_. “I thought I would be allowed to keep one thing. I thought I could keep him.” 

“What do you mean, it was your fault?” He doesn’t say it wasn’t. There’s a hundred ways that could be a lie.

Red shrugs, his shoulders too thin in Vas’ arms. “Emma said they were Indians. DIfferent tribe. Didn’t even know me. Just knew I was a Comanche that came through. Found out what he was to me.” Finally, he pushes off from Vas, gets down off the fence, his Converse crunching in the snow loudly. “And now what, I’m supposed to just get along with them, go to _school_ with them? We’re all one people now? None of it matters anymore?” 

He doesn’t finish, but Vas thinks he understands a lot better now. “None of them did it, Red. You don’t even know what tribe they were from. And it was a hundred years ago.”

“It wasn’t a hundred fucking years ago for me,” he says, his breath a cloud in the cold. “It wasn’t even twenty.” He still has his back to Vas, and it’s different, not just because he’s still a teenager. Red had never grown his hair out when Vas knew him, but now it hangs down almost to his waist. “None of it was. Not for me.” He kicks at the ground, the snow bunching up under his shoe. “It _doesn’t_ matter, does it? I’m the only one who remembers.” 

“Maybe that’s better,” Vas suggests, even though he knows that’s got to be painful for Red. “You can’t fight those battles anymore, Red. Be like if I went down to the Alamo, tried to start that shit again.” He doesn’t know if he’s helping. But he’s trying, so there’s that. “That life is over, Red. It’s not coming back. Not that part, at least.” 

“It was over, then.” Yeah. Vas has read the history books. Even back then, the world was changing, and not for the better. Not for Red’s people. Not for any of the tribes. “I thought I could keep him, at least,” Red says. “But being with me got him killed. Still could. So what’s the point?” He fiddles with the bracelet he’s been wearing since Vas got here, a woven braid of rainbow threads. Just like Red, to refuse to hide. 

There’s something to that last thing though, something more than what he first hears. Red’s always been good at playing things close to the chest, but not with Vas. Not for long. He could never define it, or even describe how he knows when Red’s got a secret, but he knows. “Red, do you know where Teddy is?”

The phone. That damn phone he’s always looking at, and now he shows Vas just what’s been so fascinating: Teddy’s Q.’s Instagram. Well, two points for social media and Teddy Q. sticking with that nickname even this time around. Vas wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d try to ditch it. 

He’s young. Can’t be any older than Red. “Jesus, how old is he?” 

“Seventeen.” Same as Red. 

Vas doesn’t think this house can stand another teenager in it, or the ups and downs those kind of relationships always have, honestly, but it’s Red, and if he wants Vas to go get Teddy Q. for him, he will. He’ll do anything to take this look off Red’s face, this _defeat_ he never saw there before, even after everything back during the first time. That’s not what Red asks him though. He asks, “Why did you go to Faraday?”

That at least, Vas has an answer for. “Me and him, that was meant to be. I felt it that first time. So did he, even if he was too much of a stubborn asshole to admit it.” No, just a week of them crashing together that had sparked up that _something_ in Vas’ chest, that feeling that this was who he was supposed to be with. Who was meant for him. There had never been anyone like Joshua Faraday in either life, and this time, Vas was holding on tight to him. “We got another chance. And we have time. I’m not wasting it, because maybe this time, we’ll get it right. Die of old age, like we’re supposed to.” 

Because whatever it is that’s brought them back around, that let them keep their old memories, for better or for worse, Vas has to believe this is a second chance for the best reasons. That he can keep his friends, his family, safe. That he can have a real life this time. Be with Josh. Live. 

“He loved you, Red.” Because he believes that, too. He hadn’t been so jaded from his own losses he was blind to what happiness there still was. “And he wasn’t stupid. Being with you, he had to have loved you.” 

Things were different in a way people now don’t seem to understand, out in the territories. People went out there to be left alone with their oddities, whatever they might be, and men like Red, like Vas, like Goody and Billy, they could be allowed it. People knew. As long as a man kept the line, no one cared. But if a white man like Jack marrying a Native woman like Raven was an oddity to be talked over back then, a white man who took up with a Native man was risking his life. 

And a Native man like Red Harvest, who refused to bend, to live like white men, that had been crossing quite a few steps over that fine line. There had been trouble, even in Rose Creek. Nothing too bad, just some looks, some gossip. People there still knew what they owed Teddy Q., what they owed Red Harvest. 

Other Indians though, with a bone to pick with the Comanche. That had just been bad luck. That seemed to always be Red Harvest’s story, though, that time. 

He looks at Red’s phone again, the screen black, and when he hits the power button, he sees the wallpaper. Picture of the mountains around the ranch. Maybe even from this spot. 

“Why did you come back to us, Red?” 

Red shrugs. “You were my family. I wanted to come home.” 

“C’mere,” Vas orders, and wraps an arm around Red when he doesn’t move, holding him close, even when Red resists. “No, you just admitted you love us. Never got that out of you back the first time. It’s nice, knowing you care.” 

“Fuck off,” Red says, elbowing him. 

He didn’t elbow Vas too hard, so he’s not really trying to shake him. Vas wasn’t looking to move just yet anyway. “I missed you, _mijo_ ,” he says, kissing the side of Red’s head. “You know that, right? Doesn’t matter if I found Josh. You’ve always been my brother, and I never stopped looking for you.” 

Red nods. “Figured Sam would find you again. So I found Sam.” 

One day, Vas is going to get that story out of him, too, but Vas figures he’s put Red through enough tonight. He dangles Red’s phone in front of him, lets him take it back, watching over his shoulder as Red hits the power button on and off, before putting it away. “I miss him.” He sticks his hands in his hoodie pocket, rocking forward a little. "Vas, I miss him."

“So use that phone you got there, and message him.”

“And say what?” He pulls away from Vas, and leans back against the fence.

Vas doesn’t know. He genuinely doesn’t. Everything with Josh had been impulse, but that had been their situation. That was always their situation. This one is something else. “All I can tell you, Red, is that this shit is making you miserable. So either figure out what to say, or stop torturing yourself, because that’s not helping.” School’s probably not helping either, honestly. Red had never liked crowds, less than Vas even. “Look, Goody did some kind of home-schooling program. Maybe we can try that. Between all of us, it can’t be that hard.” 

They’ll figure it out. They have to, because Vas isn’t letting the sheriff take Red away. He’s not sure he could stand it, and he’s now damn sure that Red certainly couldn’t. 

It’s the last cigarette in the pack. He thinks he’s going to have to take quitting seriously this time. If he wants a long life, it’ll probably be easier with healthy lungs. 

He wants to ask Red just what he did, after Teddy died. Why he didn’t live much longer. But he has the feeling he doesn’t really want to know. Red Harvest was a hard man, back then. When a hard man finally breaks, it’s rarely good. So he’s not going to ask. It’s not like he wants to think about Red dying alone, anyway. That honestly breaks his heart a little. 

But there is something he can ask. “Red, can you promise me something?” Red looks at him, hitching a shoulder just a little. “You have got to start trying. Okay? Whatever this is, it's a second chance. So you've got to try.”

It takes a minute, but they’ve got plenty to spare. So Vas waits, until Red finally nods. 

Dinner’s probably going to be on the table soon, and they should head in. Vas honestly wants to just eat, and then get into bed. Sometimes, that’s his favorite part of his day. Getting to lie in bed with Josh, not doing anything. Not _having_ to do anything. But one of the best things about getting a second chance is that there’s no rush. They can just stand out here together for a little while, as long as Red needs him. 

And when he goes in, Josh will still be there. Hell, he’ll probably be pissed at Vas for having cold hands. 

“I like it out here,” Vas says. “Wasn’t sure if I would. Never been out here this time. But I do.” _New Mexico_. There’s a poetry to that, if Vas was so inclined. He’s not, but maybe Goody will come up with something pretty. 

Beside him, Red tips his head back a little, looking up. “I like the sky,” he says. 

“Yeah?” He finishes the cigarette, and puts it out. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't happy with it the first time. We're trying again.


	3. Teddy

“Theo?”

He’s dreaming, still. Mostly coming awake, but his mind is still dreaming. He’s dreaming of the sun overhead, a clear blue sky. One of those days where it was too hot for his coat, but he was a little uncomfortable without it. The pasture is behind him, his and Emma’s horses safely behind the fence, giants grazing amongst the little nanny goats. There will be three more horses soon. 

“Theo.”

He’s leaning on the fence, the wood dry and cracked against his palms. Waiting for those horses, to see them and their riders on the horizon.

“Theo, damn it, I know you hear me.”

Teddy Q opens his eyes, and he’s not almost forty anymore, leaning on a fence he’s going to need to repair before winter truly sets in, waiting to see three riders. He’s seventeen years old now, too tall for his still-skinny frame, and he’s sitting in a window seat, his phone in his lap. “I hear you, Mom,” he says, sitting up and swinging his legs down. “Sorry, I went to the track after school, ran some laps. Didn’t mean to fall asleep. Did you need something?”

“Mama wants to know if you’re alright with chicken for dinner,” his mom says. She’s frowning at him, so he braces himself for whatever this might actually be about. “Honey, are you okay? You’ve been spending a lot of time at the track.”

He can’t tell if this is a body-issue talk, or something else. His mom tends to lean towards the first, his mama the latter, but they’ve been known to switch. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind. Running helps me think.” Or rather, not think. When he’s running, he doesn’t have to think about much of anything, just putting one foot in front of the other. “It’s nothing. Just school.” 

He’s never been much of a liar, but the good thing about that is that when he does, neither of his moms have any reason to not believe him. 

So his mom doesn’t question him now, but she’s still frowning. “Okay. Well, you’re alright with chicken, then?” He nods. “Dinner will be in about an hour then.” Before she leaves though, she stops and looks over her shoulder at him. “And please tell Billy he is more than welcome to just come inside and eat with us when we do.” 

“He knows, Mom.”

But at about eight, Teddy opens the kitchen door and lets Billy in, where he sits at the table with Teddy, eating pretty much everything Teddy has put out for him. “My mom wants me to remind you that you can just eat dinner with us. Like a normal person.”

“That the Chinese one or the Jewish one?” Billy asks, soaking up some of the leftover bolognese sauce right out of the container with a piece of the garlic bread from tonight. “I forget.” 

“Mom is Chinese, Mama is Jewish, and I know I’ve told you this.” He has. About a hundred times at least. “And they’d both like it if you just came inside. Mama says it’s like having a stray cat. And she doesn’t like cats.”

“A lesbian that doesn’t like cats?” Billy drawls. “Is that allowed?”

Teddy’s too tired to rise to the bait. He ran ten miles today easily. “I could just stop feeding you.”

“You could,” Billy agrees. “But you won’t.” 

No, he won’t. Instead, he cleans up the dishes once Billy is done, washing them by hand, and lining them up neatly in the drying rack, right beside the glass containers for the leftovers, making sure to keep them with their rubber liners. The utensils next, separating them up in the caddies by type.

“Dishwasher isn’t running,” Billy says.

“I like doing them this way.” It’s soothing, like running. He can’t do much, but he can clean. And run. “You got clothes to throw in?” 

“I could do it,” Billy offers, but Teddy grabs his bag from him. 

It’s fine. Makes things easier. In Rose Creek, there hadn’t been much downtime. There was always something that needed doing. Teddy had always been busy, whether he wanted to be or not. So he keeps busy now, too, even if there’s less to do. Technology, and all. 

Laundry is easy. He never understands it when people complain about it these days. Toss the clothes in, add detergent, and the machine does all the work now. Clothes come out even cleaner than they did after the laundry girls had them for a whole day. And it’s not like Billy has much, anyway, his easily joining what Teddy needed to put in. Most of his shirts used to be Teddy’s actually. 

Even now, when they’re the same age, Teddy is already six foot, and his shirts hang too big on Billy. If he remembers right, they’re both about done growing, at least when it comes to height. His moms will be happy about that. This time had gone the same as last time for Teddy. He’d hit about five-five when he was ten, and stopped growing until fourteen, when he shot up to be easily taller than most men, back then. 

It was a stupid thing, but he’d been worried it wouldn’t happen. That things had changed that way too. Really stupid, because this time, he had clean food, and plenty of it. 

This time, Teddy was born to a woman named Moira again. And again, she was too young to be having kids. But this time, the world had changed enough she wasn’t expected to just marry the man who knocked her up, raise a baby, have more, whether she wanted them or not. This time, there had been a private adoption before he was even a day old, and he’d gone home from the hospital with his moms. 

He wonders if Moira remembered too, or if she’s even the same Moira. But from what little he remembers of her the first time, before he’d been sent away at twelve, she hadn’t been happy. Never cruel, no. She’d been good to him, as much as she could be with seven children underfoot. Even if she’s the same Moira, Teddy’s never been able to be all that angry at her this time around. No, he just hopes she’s okay this time, wherever she is. That his father is too, wherever he is.

And this time around, there’s Billy, though Teddy’s not quite sure why. 

He’d spent a lot of years wondering just what was going on his head, why he was stuck like this, remembering one life and living another. He knew he wasn’t crazy; wasn’t like he was hearing voices, or anything. But that didn’t mean he was laboring under the delusion he was anywhere near normal. He wouldn’t exactly be normal even if he wasn’t the way he is. He was the way he is though, and it had made things harder than they needed to be. No one wanted to be friends with the weird kid. Too serious, always, for a child.

But then, in freshman year, he’d been sitting outside, and lo and behold, there was Billy standing in front of him, hands in his pockets, glaring down at Teddy like he’d done something wrong. _“You,”_ he’d said, and well, Teddy hadn’t been able to think of anything to say back except, _“Hi, Billy.”_

Because it had been Billy, no mistaking him. Only Teddy’s age, this time around, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, because he was pretty sure Billy had been about ten or fifteen years older than him the last time. None of this made any sense though, so he didn’t spend a lot of time worrying over it.

And at least this way, he had a friend. A bad situation was always easier when you had company, in his experience. Could have been worse. Could have been Faraday. Teddy might have been tempted to pretend he didn’t know anything, if that had been the case. 

While the clothes are washing, Billy lets him take a look at the cut on Billy’s forehead. He’d cleaned and bandaged it up last night, putting some butterfly stitches on the worst part. Everything looks good tonight. “You got to stop getting into fights,” he tells Billy. “Last thing you need is a juvenile record.”

“One of your moms is a lawyer.”

“Not that kind.” His mama does corporate law. His mom is an anesthesiologist. Pair of high-achievers, the both of them. Probably why they’re never sure what’s wrong with him exactly. “They’ll put you in juvie. And that’s if you don’t get tried as an adult.”

“I didn’t start it.”

It’s probably true. It’s not the point though. “You never stop it, either.” Because Billy is just the same, a century and half a life lived later. He can never just walk away. Or maybe it’s because Goody’s not here, to smooth things over. “Wasn’t worth it.” Billy just scoffs at him, but he holds still as Teddy puts a fresh bandage on over the butterfly stitches. Infection is nothing to laugh about. He’d seen plenty of men who’d survived the Civil War with less limbs than they went in with because of that kind of thing. “Alright, you’re good. Do you need to use my laptop?”

While Billy works on whatever he needs to for school, Teddy works on his math homework. He’s in Calculus II. He’s pretty sure calculus existed back the first time around, but he’d never so much as heard the word. His moms think it’ll look good for college. What he’s supposed to do when he gets to said college, they haven’t told him. It’s something to do. Better than nothing. 

It kills time until he can switch the clothes to the dryer at least. Now they can go to his room. 

His moms are in their room, watching TV, when him and Billy come down the hall. “Hello, Billy,” his mom says pointedly. 

Billy hitches his chin at her, and Teddy shoves him along back towards his own room before they notice the bandage. He’s not in the mood to answer questions. And Billy would just lie anyway. Teddy doesn’t particularly like lying to them, even if he’s just standing there while Billy does it. He’s lying to them about enough things. 

Lying by omission is still a lie. 

The futon under the window in his room has the pillow and the blankets still sitting on the end, neatly folded like Billy had left them this morning, and now he goes through the process of setting everything up while Teddy changes. 

He’s told Billy before that he can just leave it. But every morning, Billy folds everything back up, and sits it all at the end of the futon again. 

“Anyone going to be looking for you tonight?” 

“Middle of the month,” Billy says, shaking his head while he tucks the sheet in. “Social worker won’t come by until next week. Long as I’m there and accounted for, it’s good.” 

“There is something fundamentally broken with that,” Teddy muses out loud. 

Billy huffs. “You forget the part where we used to sell extra kids to the railroads, or any laborer wandering through?”

“That wasn’t good either.” But Teddy had gotten luckier than Billy that time too. His parents had been Quakers, and he’d been able to go to more school than most. His father had sold him off to a horse master headed further west when he was twelve, trying to get him out of Missouri after the war, and he’d spent most of that job just keeping track of the numbers. Useful kids stayed fed and clothed. Horse masters kept enough labourers that the greycoats still roaming the hills didn’t risk trying to attack them. He’d been lucky. “You’d think someone would come up with something better eventually.”

“I’m not working eighteen hours a day for assholes,” Billy replies. “And I get to be a citizen. Still better.”

Teddy knows when he’s beaten, so he lets it go, sitting on his bed and looking at his phone. His search is still up from earlier. Same results as yesterday though. A thousand Sam Chisolms, none of them the right one. And no Goodnight Robicheaux to be found anywhere. He never bothers with the other names. They’re all too common. It’s like sifting through the sand for a grain of rice. 

The one name Teddy would like to find is never going to happen anyway. He didn’t have a last name. 

He’s only seventeen. He shouldn’t know what he already does about a thousand and one things, but he does. There’s no helping it, unless he wants to let Billy take a swing at him and try out amnesia as a solution. Which he doesn’t. Billy might be up for trying, just to see if it works. Probably wouldn’t. And he doesn’t want to forget. Not really. He might know too much about the world, carry too much inside of him for how little he’s lived this time, but he’d rather carry it than lose one scrap of the memories he holds dear amongst the bad ones. 

“Nothing today.” he says to Billy, turned away from him, looking at the wall. He has an old poster framed there, _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_. His moms have never really understood his fascination with them, those old westerns. That one, in particular. He’s never told Billy, but the first time he’d watched it, when he was twelve, already drowning in memories, he’d liked it because it reminded him of Billy and Goody, in some ways. “Sorry.”

“I’m not worried,” Billy replies. 

He says it almost every day, but Teddy still rolls over onto his back, so he can see Billy. “Why not?”

It’s dark out, just the streetlights outside to light up the room when Billy pulls back the shade and opens the window over the futon, lighting a cigarette. “I’ll find Goody. I know that. What’s there to worry about?”

Everything in the world, but that’s not entirely true for Billy. Not in the same way. “Things are different, is all. We weren’t the same age, that time.” 

“I’m still older,” Billy points out. 

“By less than a year.” Hardly any time at all, with everything taken into context. But important enough. Billy will be eighteen in the spring, and then Teddy knows, he’ll be gone. The only thing keeping him here is the law, and the fact they’ve proven they’ll drag him right back if he runs. Once Billy’s eighteen though, there’ll be nothing stopping him from taking off to track down Goody, wherever he is this time around. “Have you decided where you’re going to look first?”

“Got a couple of months,” Billy says. “I’ll have a lead by then.”

It’s not worth saying, but Teddy’s always been good at saying what no one else thinks is worth a penny. “I’m going to miss you. Think my moms will be devastated, though. They’re pretty convinced we’re together, and not telling them. For whatever reason.” He’s not sure what those reasons could be, but it’s not a crazy conclusion to come to, not from where they were sitting. Why else would Teddy be feeding and housing the local juvenile delinquent? 

No, they’re the crazy ones, him and Billy. Dreaming of the wild west, a hundred and forty years ago, another life. Dreaming of waiting for those horses on the horizon, when a job was done, and the men left came home, to the clapboard house just outside of town that he ended up sharing with Emma Cullen for the rest of his days. That house, the smell of whitewash and pine floors, the scent that’s been burned into his mind even before he knew what it was this time, that had been home.

Always waiting for one horse in particular, one rider. _And I looked, and behold! A pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death -_

Red Harvest had always thought that was funny. So had Teddy. Funny little joke, shared at night usually, like now, when it was just the two of them in the little bedroom built off from the sitting room, Red Harvest’s gear leaning against the wall with his bow, his long knives set by the bed with his boots and his gun. 

Why had it been so funny? It had been true, and they’d both known it. Maybe that was why. Truth was always funnier than fiction, along with being far stranger. 

Funny, that someone like Red Harvest had cared for Teddy Q., of all people. Strange too, to everyone else looking in from the outside, the ones who knew. There had never been anything special about him. Red Harvest had been the only person who had thought so. 

He misses him. He had thought, back then, that first time, that he would have to be prepared to lose Red Harvest one day. That the day would come when his horse didn’t appear on the horizon. When he would keep riding, find something else. Or Death would catch up with him, on another pale horse. It was the nature of Red Harvest’s life. 

Teddy had never thought he would die first. Maybe he didn’t, though. Red Harvest had been away when it happened, when the men came to the clapboard house, and asked for his name. That was all they’d asked. He still wonders why. What was so interesting about him, that men he hadn’t even known had wanted him dead?

He’s only ever hoped that they didn’t hurt Emma. That’s all he can do, here and now, over a hundred years later. That he was all they’d been after. That they let her be. 

Here and now, all he can do is hope. He’s not even sure what he’s hoping for, most of the time. He tries not to get too carried away. He can dream of a life lived, he can dream of the man he loved in that life, but he’s not going to pin everything on it. 

Just because he loved Red Harvest, he was never arrogant enough to think he would have any hold over him for long. Nothing had. And even if he did love Teddy, it’s not as though they were like Billy and Goody. There’s no reason for him to believe Red Harvest would be looking for him the way Billy is looking for Goody, the way he knows Goody must be looking for Billy. 

“What will you do, when you find Goody?” 

“What we did the first time,’ Billy answers, blowing smoke out the window. “Make life work for us. And things are different, now. No more hiding. At least, not that part of who we are.” Some of the smoke blows back in, but Teddy’s mama sneaks cigarettes in the laundry room when his mom isn’t home, so if the smell lingers, no one will say anything. “That guy on the lacrosse team, Jamaal? He was asking me about you.”

He knows him. They have chemistry together, so to speak. “Why were you talking to him?”

“I wasn’t. He was talking at me.” That sounds about right. People are always trying to talk to Billy, for whatever reason. “He likes you.” 

Teddy can’t see how Jamaal would even know that. They’ve never talked much. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing,” he says. 

Exactly what Teddy would have asked him to say. There’s nothing to tell. 

Maybe Red Harvest loved him, maybe he didn’t, but Teddy loved him. Still does. The world’s changed too much to still make men like him, how he was, and that’s probably for the best, but Teddy doesn’t think he’s capable of loving anyone different. Not even now. “Did you ever love anyone?” he asks Billy. “Before Goody?”

“If I did, I forgot about them,” Billy answers, finishing the cigarette and waving at some of the smoke. “So not the way I loved Goody.” He’s watching Teddy, even as he shuts the window and the curtain. “You could come with me. When I leave.” 

“My moms don’t even let me go to away meets without one of them,” Teddy says, the idea laughable. “‘Sides, I doubt Goodnight is all that concerned with my whereabouts.” 

“Knowing Goody, if he can’t find me, he’ll find Sam,” Billy points out. “Maybe the others will come to him.” Teddy’s got his eyes closed by this point, but he can hear Billy moving around, stretching out on the futon. His mom had been talking last week about maybe putting another bed in Teddy’s room instead of the old thing. _“Just a little twin. It’ll be good for guests, and maybe you’ll bring your roommate home for visits sometimes, after you go to college.”_ “You don’t want to see him again?”

He would like to see him again. Sam, and Vasquez. They hadn’t had many years together, after Bogue, but they’d had enough that they’d felt like a family. At least, to Teddy they had. “I’m sure they’ve got their own lives to live.” Better lives than that last time. Vasquez isn’t running from a warrant in this life, and Sam isn’t living with a scar around his neck. “I’m probably the last thing on their minds.” He hopes life has been kinder to both of them this time around. They’d never deserved anything less. 

He doesn’t dream of the horses that night, but it’s another, just as common dream. His mind conjures up Emma and Matthew tonight, his friends. Matthew, at eighteen, when they’d first met, as tall as Teddy is now, holding something out to him. The reins of a horse, a bay with a white star on her chest. An offer to leave, to throw his luck in with Matthew’s, and hope it all shook out okay. 

In the dream, Emma’s wearing a blue dress with little yellow flowers on it. It tugs at the strings of his memory, the pattern almost the same as the bolt of fabric he had bought for her when she was twenty, and still Emma Tower, Matthew trying to court her and making a mess of it. Teddy had thought the fabric would be pretty with her hair; he’d bought it for Matthew to give to her. He’d wanted her to like Matthew, because Matthew was already so in love with her, and he’d wanted Matthew to be happy.

Then, Matthew had asked Teddy, with that sly look, just what he knew about women. Because everyone had known about Teddy, even then. It wasn’t the same, not how people thought things were back then. People had known, but it hadn’t been anything worth talking about. It was what it was.

_“More than you, but that’s not hard, from where I’m sitting.”_

The pattern is almost right, in the dream. Little yellow flowers. Cowslips. 

When he wakes up, he can’t remember what he was talking about with Emma in the dream. She’d loved that fabric, had made two dresses with it, and worn them until they couldn’t be anymore. Worn those dresses so often, they could have been talking about anything. 

Would Emma be looking for Sam, in this life? Knowing her, she’s going to try and find Matthew before anyone. Back then, she had never remarried, at least not while Teddy was alive. Wasn’t like many men had been asking. The Widow Cullen had a reputation by then. People in town had thought she’d gone a bit crazy, after Matthew. Bringing down God’s wrath on Bogue’s head, and keeping company with the Devil after. 

Been nothing though, compared to what they said about Teddy himself, there at the end. She’d only kept company with the Devil; he’d invited the Devil into his bed. 

Lying there in his bed, the sun risen just enough it’s turned his bedroom gray, he loses himself in a memory of himself and Emma. Close to the end, but he hadn’t known that. She’d asked him, while they were scouring pots and pans in the autumn sun, when Red Harvest was coming back. By then, they’d already lost Vasquez and Sam too. _“Before the snow starts.”_

It had been snowing, that evening when those men had shown up. 

It’s snowing now, too, he realizes, when he gets out of bed and looks out the window. 

Billy helps him shovel the driveway and gets the cars cleaned off while his moms go about getting ready for work. When they’re done and dried off, their wet things hanging in the laundry closet, Teddy makes them both breakfast. Vegetable omelettes. Billy drinks coffee, watching him the whole time, but he always does. “You and Vasquez, I swear,” Teddy says to him. 

“‘Me and Vasquez’?”

“It’s like you both think if you take your eyes off the food for a second, it’s going to disappear.” Vas had been particularly bad about it. “He used to lurk in the kitchen whenever I was cooking something, make up all these things that needed doing in there.” Back then, people didn’t just sit around in a kitchen unless there was a reason. Too hot, most of the time, and extra people would have just been in the way. “Emma was never one for cooking, not really. Did it because she had to. But when I was younger, I used to get put to work in the kitchen when I wasn’t needed for the horses. I liked it.” The horse master’s wife had been a good cook, and she’d been grateful for the help. 

And her lessons had stuck, even in this life. His moms have always said they have no idea where he gets it from. But it’s easy to make a pie from scratch when you were used to doing it with an oven that smoked and just a pocketwatch to keep time with. 

Not having to check that the flour hadn’t been cut with chalk is nice too. 

“I’m always hungry,” Billy admits, now. “Was then, too. Never feels like I get enough to eat.” 

“You don’t,” Teddy says. “My moms are going to want you to stay for the weekend. I’d like it if you did, too. I don’t sleep well when I’m worrying you’re holed up in a bus station or somewhere.” He can feel Billy still watching him, as he cleans the pan, and resets the coffee. “What?”

“Come with me,” Billy says again. “Just for a little bit. We’ll call it a college trip.”

“I don’t think you need me.”

“I don’t. That’s not why I’m asking.” It’s not that there’s nothing to say to it, Teddy just doesn’t know what to say. They didn’t know each other long enough to get close the last time, but Teddy knows they’re friends now. Not just because he feeds Billy, either. It’s easy with him, is all. Teddy doesn’t have to pretend with Billy, and Billy’s comfortable with him. They understand one another. “Besides, it still doesn’t hurt to have a white boy around. I’m not exactly a ‘model minority’.”

“You’re not even a minority. Asians outnumber white people.” 

“Were you this much of a smartass the last time around?” 

“Sometimes.” Vasquez and Sam had always thought it was hilarious. “If you hadn’t gotten yourself shot full of holes, maybe you’d of found out.” 

Billy throws a piece of chopped up pepper at him. “I saved _your town_.” 

“You didn’t have to come,” Teddy reminds him. “We were just told to get Goody. Not my fault you decided to follow after him.” He gets another pepper thrown at him, this one landing in the skillet instead. “Make you feel better, I think half the boys born after that were named ‘WIlliam’. All of them wanted to grow up to be the great Billy Rocks.” 

There had been a gaggle of them, none older than five before Teddy was gone too. All of them running around with kitchen knives, claiming they would be the fastest draw in town when they were grown. Vasquez had always gotten a kick out of it. So had Teddy. 

“I used to make up stories about you,” he tells Billy now, watching the eggs cook. “The kids used to ask. Kind of worked with what Goody had said, mostly.” He hadn’t been able to do anything for Billy and Goody at the end, nor Faraday or Jack Horne, but he’d tried to at least make the memories of them good. 

“Goody made up most of them too,” Billy says, smiling as Teddy hands him a plate. “Him and Sam were very good at making shit up. I think Sam said I was from Hong Kong.”

“Lucky for Sam, I don’t think any of Bogue’s men were hired for their geography skills.” Teddy would put good money on none of them even knowing what the word ‘geography’ was. “Can’t really remember if I knew Korea and China were different.” It hadn’t had much to do with his own daily life. 

The food can’t be cool enough, but Billy is still trying to eat it. Teddy starts making another omelette, figuring Billy will inhale the one Teddy made for himself too. Skinny as Billy is, he eats more than Teddy. “It was different. Korea, China, all of it. We wouldn’t have recognized them now. When I was living there this time, I was in a city that didn’t even exist the first time.”

“Yeah, well this was barely a state back then,” Teddy reminds him. “Everything’s changed.”

“Except us,” Billy says. 

“Except us,” Teddy echoes. “And hopefully Goody.” That’s enough to ask for. Teddy won’t delude himself into thinking they’re owed any more than that. Besides that, it just seems plain cruel to ask for the others to remember. “Doubt there’s any force on Earth that could keep you two apart for long, though. Love’s like that.”

He doesn’t like the way Billy is looking at him. But Billy doesn’t ask. He never does. 

He does steal Teddy’s omelette though. 

The social worker comes by Billy’s foster home next week, like Billy said, and it goes like it always does. Billy shows up that night around nine, Teddy feeds him and does his laundry. It’s a good routine, and if his moms ask pointed questions sometimes, well, he can’t blame them. Even in this life, Teddy’s not obvious, but it’s never been hard to tell what kind of man he is, if someone is looking. Not that anyone was ever doing much looking, not in either life. 

No, there’d only ever been one man who looked at him for long. And hard as it is, to think of Red Harvest being out there, and not being with him, Teddy doesn’t really want him to remember. Nothing in this life has been kinder to Red’s people. He’d rather Red Harvest have a fresh start, and not have to carry that around. Even if that means he never thinks of Teddy in this life, even if that means Teddy never gets to see him ever again and has to live with this alone, that would be better. He’d rather that for all the others too. To have a fresh start. 

And it’s better not to dwell on it, anyway. This is the life he has to live this time, so best to just get on with it. He can help Billy find Goody, and that’ll have to be enough. 

It’s in March that he gets a job at the local library, through his mom’s friend, and he gets relegated to the task of sorting through the boxes for the historical society. _Junk_ , they call it, but Teddy’s got a knack for it, and they send more boxes. Colorado is obsessed with the old days, though, and Teddy’s knack for it isn’t really what they think it is. 

“This one’s got to be from the 1870’s,” he says, and when they ask how he knows, he makes something up. He can’t say it’s because of the hats, and that he remembers when that style was in fashion, and affordable enough every man had one. 

There’s photos of Natives too, most unlabelled. Photographers probably never even bothered to ask their names, their tribes, but he recognizes some. Not the people, but the clothes. Beads he remembers Navajo women wearing around that time, guns Apache men had favored. But he still looks at their faces, searching for something. Some shared features, maybe. They’re never the right tribe though. 

One day, a box comes through with some new ones. Mostly Apache, actually labelled this time, in someone long dead’s looping penmanship. But there’s one, only labelled _painted horses_ , that he lingers over longer. 

He had asked Red Harvest what it meant, the paint. _“Nothing. Just decoration.”_ Except red. Red paint was only for war, but the photos are too old for color. 

It’s wrong, maybe, but he slips the photo of the horses into his pocket. No one will miss it, and if they do, it’ll be chalked up to just getting put in the wrong box. One of the horses is white, is all, with a sun painted on its flank. Sometimes Red Harvest had put that design on his own horse. _“Keeps the rain away,”_ he’d joked. _“It’s good luck.”_

Teddy had known he was making it up, had called him on it. But it had been just them in the barn, and Red Harvest had reached out for him, his hand on the nape of Teddy’s neck. He’d always been so warm. He’d loved it when Red Harvest would touch him, loved the strength in his hands, in all of him. They weren’t stupid enough to ever do it where anyone could see, the risk too much anywhere that wasn’t that clapboard house, so he’d been grateful for every chance he got. 

He has to stop and wipe his face now. God, he’s so dumb sometimes. Crying about a love that’s been gone for a hundred and forty years. 

He finds a frame to put the picture in, the frame too big for it, but keeping it safe regardless. Maybe it’s not good luck, but it’s something, 

When he gets out of the shower, Billy is sitting on the futon, looking at it. “Looks like Red Harvest’s horse,” he says. 

“What of it?” They need to do laundry. He’s running out of sleeping shirts. 

This time, Billy doesn’t drop it. “Do you think I’m going to judge you?” He sounds insulted. Genuinely so. So Teddy turns to him, takes the picture back, and sets it in place, right where he can see it when he wakes up. “You know everything about Goody and me.”

“Ain’t no point in talking about it, is all. It’s got nothing to do with you.” He’s never even tried to talk about, not in any life. Talking about it was a good way to get himself killed the first time, get the people he loved hurt. People had mostly turned a blind eye, and talked behind his back plenty, but if he had given them one reason, just one - “Got nothing to do with anything, anymore.”

“He’ll find Sam, won’t he?” He would. Teddy is almost sure he would. Red Harvest hadn’t gotten on with most people. Hell, he hadn’t even gotten on with most of the people from his own tribe. He’d told Teddy that, more than once. Had told Teddy about Comanche warriors, how they lived. The people he rode with were his family as much as blood, in their way of doing things.

It had been a roundabout way of telling Teddy that he considered them his family. That the clapboard house was home to him, too. “Sam was important to him. Vasquez too. Vasquez even called him ‘little brother’. He’d find them.” 

“And you?” 

“Does it matter?” It doesn’t. None of it can matter anymore. It was over a century ago, and it’s all gone now. Even Rose Creek is gone, swallowed up by another town long before he was born this time, just a notation on a history book. Emma and Matthew are gone, Sam and Vasquez too. It’s all gone, everything except his memories. “Everything is gone. So why are you asking?

Billy stands up, picks up the picture again. “Comanche aren’t gone. They’ve even got a flag.” 

Yeah, Teddy’s seen it. He’s spent a lot of time reading up on them, more than he should. “So?”

“So tell me,” Billy says, sitting back down on the futon and opening the window. He lights a cigarette, and not for the first time, Teddy wonders where the hell he gets them. “I’ve told you about Goody. Tell me something, for once.”

Teddy sits down beside him, takes the picture back. It’s too old to really see the horse’s markings, the paint covering up some of it. “Why?”

“Because we’re friends, stupid.” 

They are, aren’t they? Vasquez used to say that to him, whenever Teddy would wonder aloud why Vasquez always had to annoy him when he was cooking, or doing something. _“I just like your company.”_ No one had ever really liked his company, before Matthew, and Emma. It had been strange, that men like Sam Chisolm and Vasquez, larger than life, had done so. That Red Harvest, who had seemed to be able to count the people he liked on one hand, had liked him, of all people.

“I just don’t know what you want to hear,” Teddy says. 

Billy shrugs. “Tell me something about Red Harvest. I thought he was funny, myself. Vasquez was convinced he spoke Spanish.”

“He did. Fluently. English, too.”

“I knew that,” Billy tells him. “Old trick. When they think you don’t speak English, white people never shut the hell up. Say all sorts of things they shouldn’t.” Teddy can’t argue. He’d been guilty of that himself plenty of times, he’s sure. “Tell me something. He couldn’t have always been a jackass.”

“He wasn’t. Not always.” No, there’d been times he’d let himself be soft. Not often, and only in small ways. There had been something Red Harvest used to do with him, though. Only when they were alone, when they were in bed for the night. “Whenever he was upset about something, he used to do this thing? At night.” He has no idea why he’s saying this. He’s never told anyone this, not even Emma, and she had asked questions sometimes, leading kinds, in a gentle way. She’d been hurt he wouldn’t talk about things with her, he knew. But he’d never been able to do it. Just kept everything inside, where it was safe. “He’d,” and Teddy touches his chest, remembering the weight. “He’d put his head on my chest. Wouldn’t say nothing. He liked if I did. I’d read out loud to him, sometimes.” 

And it’s such a silly thing, but he missed it when Red Harvest was gone on a job. The weight of him, across Teddy’s chest, the sound of his breathing. 

Beside him, Billy exhales smoke out the window. “It’s soothing. Goody used to do that for me.” He shrugs. “Luckily for both of us, Goody liked the sound of his own voice.” 

That gets Teddy to laugh. He does remember Goody talking a whole lot. “I know I can’t be thinking about it all the time. It’s stupid. My moms want me to go to college. Find a nice boy, eventually. Do all the things I’m supposed to do.”

“That’s not how it works,” Billy says. 

“How what works?”

He blows a smoke ring. “Life,” he drawls, mocking Teddy just a little. “We’re seventeen. And this isn’t like last time. We don’t have to decide our whole lives just yet.” That’s true. Last time he was seventeen, he’d already known what he was good at, what he would do for the rest of his life. He was good with numbers, and with animals. That was enough, then. “I know what I am. Who I am. As for what I’m going to do…” He waves the cigarette around, encompassing nothing. “I’ll figure it out. But _I_ will do it.”

There’s a point he’s making. One Teddy thinks he gets. “I’ve never minded being told what to do. Think I’m the kind of person who needs it.” There’s nothing wrong with that, at least he’s never thought so. 

“And who told you to sleep with Red Harvest?”

“No one.” If he’d asked, he’s damn sure everyone and anyone would have told him to never even hint he’d so much as had the thought occur to him. “I just loved him.” That was all it was, easy as that. He’d loved him. Been willing to risk everything to be with him. And he hadn’t even minded. What little time he’d gotten with Red Harvest had been worth it, to him at least. 

Billy actually laughs at him, making sure to keep the cigarette by the window while he does it, at least. “Did you steal that picture?”

“Shut up.” 

“You always surprise me, you know? First time I met you, back then, I couldn’t get a read on you. Did you know that?” Teddy shakes his head. He hadn’t thought Billy or Goody had even noticed him at all, with Faraday in the room. “You want to be told what you should do? Come with me. We’ll find Sam. And Goody. And Red Harvest.” 

“And do what? Live on a farm or something, pretend we ain’t crazy?”

“Your parents are interracial lesbians with an adopted baby, in fucking Colorado,” Billy says. “You turn out to be a throwback hippie living on a commune, they’ve got no one to blame but themselves.” 

It’s funny, funny enough they’re both laughing when there’s a knock on the door. Teddy waits until Billy’s put the cigarette out and shut the window before calling that it’s open, but it’s just his mama. Teddy suspects she knows damn well that Billy smokes, but since she isn’t looking to get outed herself, they’re in some kind of mutually assured destruction agreement where no one says anything. “Boys? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Teddy answers, shaking his head. “Something dumb.” 

“Uh-huh. Is that teenage-boy for ‘none of your business, Mama’?”

“I like your haircut,” Billy says to her. 

She eyes him, but she’s smiling. “Well, at least someone noticed.” Honestly, Teddy can’t see much difference, but it is a little shorter, so he says something too about it being nice. “Good save.” She comes into the room, sits on the bed. “I didn’t get to see you today. How was school?”

“Fine.” There’s nothing else to tell. He went to class, ran after school, then went to work, and came home to let Billy in. Might be time to just give him a key, honestly. It’s still cold out. “How was work?”

“Fine,” she says. “Another day, another corporation getting sued for something they definitely did, and paying us to make it go away. Truly, I have chosen the noblest of professions. Do me a favor, Theo, be a doctor like your mom. At least then you can say you’re saving lives, even if people are ungrateful.” 

He couldn’t imagine being a doctor or a lawyer. That’s a little too much responsibility for him. “I’ll think about it.” 

“Mm-hmm.” She turns to Billy next. “What about you, Billy, how was school?” 

“I went.” He always says that, but Teddy knows for a fact that he’s doing well. Better than Teddy, even. It keeps the social worker off his back, he claims. “It was high school. Same as yesterday.”

“Yeah, well, can’t argue with that. But it’ll be over soon, and you’ll see. You’ll be able to forget it ever happened.” 

“Aren’t you supposed to tell us high school will be the best years of our lives?” Billy’s just messing with her at this point, but she clearly knows, so Teddy leaves it alone. 

“Oh, honey, no, I spend all day lying. I don’t do it when I get home. You should know that by now.” She reaches over and pats Billy’s knee. “Which reminds me, Wendy and me were talking. We’re taking Theo shopping for some new clothes this weekend, and you wearing his old ones is not working for you.”

Billy looks at Teddy, asking. “It means you’re going,” Teddy explains. “And they’re going to buy you clothes.”

His mama points at him. “See, my son is a smart boy.” 

After she leaves, Billy looks at Teddy again. “I’m not saying no if they want to give me things.” As though Teddy might mind. 

“You really can’t keep wearing my shirts. They don’t fit.” 

It’s some time after that, after Teddy steals the picture and frames it, that the weather finally starts to warm up. Rose Creek isn’t any less further away, but it’s still close in his mind, in his heart. Spring reminds him of everything that needed doing once the last frost was gone, everything he still thinks he’s supposed to be doing. He gets up early to run, and sometimes Billy comes with him. Teddy’s got longer legs, but Billy’s faster, and they keep pace pretty easily. 

The picture is lucky, it turns out, because that’s when, finally, he gets a hit. 

_Goodnight Robicheaux_ , on a site for the local news of a small town in New Mexico. Praying, he switches from his phone to his laptop, scrolls through the whole article, hoping for a picture. It’s a piece about local artists in that area, some showing. 

There’s a picture. It’s Goodnight. Younger, but _Goodnight_. 

When he shows Billy, Billy grins. “We’re the same age,” he says. “I knew it. Where is this?”

“New Mexico,” Teddy says. “The northern part, looks like.” The look on Billy’s face isn’t hard to mistake, so before he even moves, Teddy reminds him, “You have to wait, Billy.”

“I don’t have to do shit -” He’s already grabbing his bag, so Teddy puts his laptop aside, and snatches it from him. “I know where he is, Teddy, I have to go.”

“You’re seventeen for two more weeks. If you take off now, you’re a runaway, and social services will send the police after you. It’ll fuck up everything -” He dodges when Billy tries to snatch his bag back. “You won’t even be able to get your GED. And you won’t be able to do anything to get to him. You can’t get a credit card, you can’t rent a motel room, and you sure as hell can’t rent a car. You won’t even have access to your birth certificate, or your social security card, you know, the things that prove you’re a citizen? You could get _deported_ without those things. You have to wait.” 

He sees the gears turning in Billy’s head, sees Billy knows he’s right. They’re seventeen, the both of them, and in this time, that makes them all but powerless. “I know where he is,” Billy insists, but it’s quiet. 

“He’ll still be there in two weeks.” 

And in two weeks, Billy won’t be here. Teddy knew this day was coming, but it’s somehow so much worse with an actual date on it. Billy will be gone, and Teddy will be alone again, lost in a memory of a place that doesn’t even exist anymore. 

But he knows what this means to Billy. He’s been waiting all this time, waiting for Goody, and Teddy wants to help him. One of them should get to be happy. 

His moms notice; of course they do. “What’s in New Mexico?” His mom asks, when she finds the maps. Teddy and Billy both know technology might fail, especially since it looks like Billy will be heading into the mountains, so he’d gotten some maps from the library and copied them for Billy, the town Goody must be in circled and a couple of routes plotted out. 

“A friend of Billy’s,” Teddy answers. 

“And what? He’s just going to take a little trip out there? In the middle of the semester?” She doesn’t wait for another answer. “When is this supposed to happen?”

“He’s taking his GED test on Thursday,” Teddy tells her, digging in his backpack for his phone. “After that, he’s going to go. He’s got some money saved up.” Billy does odd, under-the-table jobs, usually for the local restaurants. It pays in cash, which Billy needs, since he still can’t get a bank account. “He’s going out there for good.” 

She stares at him for a second. “I don’t understand. Why would he do that?”

He’s too tired to even try and lie. “Because that’s what he wants to do, Mom,” he says. “It’s not a big deal.” That part is kind of a lie. But this isn’t about him. 

“But…” She falters, and Teddy almost feels sorry for her. “Well. That must be some friend. For him to just take off like that.” There’s nothing Teddy feels like saying about that, so he just keeps going through his backpack, taking out his books and his notebook. “I suppose...well, he’ll be eighteen. I guess, since he doesn’t have any family here, it makes sense he’d want to leave.” She puts her hand on his shoulder, squeezes. “Theo, honey -”

“I’m fine, Mom,” he says, tired of the conversation before it’s even started. 

“You always say that,” she snaps, startling him. “You always say that, whenever we ask about anything. But we’re not blind, Theo, we’re your parents. Something has been bothering you for awhile, and you won’t talk about it. If it’s not Billy, what is it?”

He misses his friends. He misses his other family. And despite what he tells himself, how hard he tries to convince himself that it doesn’t matter anymore, that he needs to move on, he feels like a part of his heart has been carved out of his chest. And it _hurts_. It hurts so much. He loves his mothers, he does. But he just misses them all.

He misses Red Harvest. So much that he thinks it’s going to crush him, sometimes. 

“It’s nothing, Mom.” 

Nothing worth getting into. He’s still seventeen, and even if Sam Chisolm is with Goody, even if they all are, there’s no point to him hoping. He’s stuck here. 

Billy turns eighteen, and takes his GED. He sleeps at Teddy’s house after, his foster family apparently glad to wash their hands of him now that they won’t get a paycheck for him. It’s not like it really changes anything. He doesn’t really remember the last time Billy wasn’t sleeping on the futon. 

That’ll change soon. 

It’s raining the next day, a Saturday, when they both get up. His moms are already up, at the table, though, and before Teddy can so much as think about finding something to do, his mama says, “Boys, why don’t you sit down.”

They don’t even get to say anything before Billy says, “I can go now.” 

“Jesus Christ, kid, we’re not putting you on the street,” his mom drawls. “We’re used to you. No, we wanted to talk to you about this New Mexico thing.” She puts her coffee down, looks at his mama. “We’re not entirely comfortable with the idea of you hitchhiking, or whatever your plan is. You’re only eighteen, and you don’t even have a credit card. Whatever motels you could stay at are going to be the bad kind. The ones that rent by the hour.” 

“I’ve stayed in worse places,” Billy says. He definitely has. He’s told Teddy some things about some of his previous foster homes. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, well, that may be true, but neither of us will be able to sleep. We’ve gotten fond of you.” His mom looks at his mama again, nudges her. 

Now she says, “The truth is, we…” She takes a sip of her coffee. “God, I can’t believe I’m going to say this. This week starts spring break. Theo will have two weeks off. We wanted to offer...that...maybe, you two could go together. Theo could drive you, help you get settled. And he has a credit card, so you two could stay in decent places.” 

Teddy doesn’t know what to say. What even can he say? “You two would let me drive him to New Mexico?”

“Most of the kids in your class are driving themselves all sorts of places for spring break,” his mama says. “I know we’ve always been a little overprotective, but you’ve never given us a reason not to trust you. Just the opposite. And this is a big thing. We’d like to show you that we do trust you, and we understand how hard this is.” It must be like swallowing vinegar for her to say it; she’d never even left him alone at a birthday party, when he was growing up. “And we would feel better knowing that Billy got there safely, and had a way back if things don’t work out. We’d take him ourselves, but neither of us can get the time off work, and...your mom argued that this was kind of a ‘rite of passage’. Taking a road trip.”

His mom rubs her shoulder. “Did that hurt? It looked like it hurt, honey.” 

“This is a terrible idea, and I’m going to spend the whole time imagining you being dismembered by a serial killer trucker,” his mama says. 

That sounds more like her. “But you’ll let me go?”

His mom reaches across the table, grabs his hand. “Theo, we really do trust you. And you’re seventeen. You’re not a baby anymore.” 

They head out on Monday, the Jeep packed with everything Billy owns, which isn’t much. Barely one bag full, and his mom’s old laptop. A gift, she’d said. To make sure he could keep in touch, at the very least. 

Billy waits until they’ve left the neighborhood before he rolls down the window, lighting a cigarette. “This’ll be fun,” he says, almost cheerily. 

“You’re not going to be the one driving,” Teddy reminds him. It’s a long trip. 

“Sue me, I don’t know how to drive.” He fiddles with the radio, but leaves the volume low. “And I’m not on your insurance.” The station he picked is playing some song Teddy thinks he knows, but he can’t quite pay attention enough. “Goody will have found Sam. Why else would he be in New Mexico?”

A hundred reasons, but Teddy’s not going to bring him down. “Maybe.”

“And Sam will find Red Harvest.” 

“Red Harvest was never looking to be found,” Teddy says, thinking of the first time. _Behold! A pale horse -_ “He did the finding, if you recall.”

Billy laughs at him, tapping the ash off his cigarette against the rolled-down window. “Then he’ll find Sam. And you’ll be waiting.”

Waiting, always waiting, against a split-rail fence, for the riders on the horizon. Waiting for the snow to come. And that last time, looking up at the sky and thinking Red Harvest would be back soon, would come to bed with Teddy, his head on Teddy’s chest. Waiting and wondering if this would be the time the last horse wouldn’t appear. Did it? Did Red Harvest come home, only to find Teddy gone? He’s wondered so many times about what happened after. Been scared of it, really. 

It’s after, now. “This is a really crazy idea.”

“Good thing I’ve got you,” Billy replies. “Always useful, having a white boy around.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Billy & Teddy Q! A Dynamic Duo! Well, no, the Duo of "Please don't do that/I'm gonna do it"


	4. Josh

Josh doesn’t smoke in this life. Never picked up the habit, so this body isn’t really craving nicotine. It’s just a memory, that picks at him sometimes, like now, until he gives in and steals a cigarette from one of the packs Vas hides in the freezer, stepping out onto the patio to smoke it. He usually can’t even make it all the way through one before his lungs have had enough. 

No exception this time. Doesn’t help he’s been coughing on paint fumes for the past couple of days. He puts it out, not even half-smoked, in the old flower pot on the patio, sitting down on the concrete, stretching his legs out on the mostly-dead patch of grass right in front of it. The other little yards on either side of them don’t have any grass at all. One on the left is just red dirt, but the one on the right is a mess of cactuses in flower pots and a bunch of whirligigs. 

They didn’t have a yard at the place in Louisiana. Just some kind of flower bed bordering the front that only ever had gravel in it. They’re probably going to have to do something with it, come spring. Maybe they could get a hibachi, or something. Neighbors have a grill, so they must be cool with it around here. 

He wouldn’t mind having a grill. Wouldn’t mind doing something with the yard, even if it ain’t really theirs. He don’t know nothing about plants, and this is all rocky, mountain land up here. No point in grass. But they could get some pots, put some cactuses in them. 

_Cacti_. That’s right, cactus is like octopus. 

They don’t need much looking after, from what he’s heard. Couldn’t hurt to try, if they’re going to be staying out here. Well, no ‘if’. Vas ain’t looking to leave not that they’ve gotten here, and Josh is sticking with Vas. And they’ve signed a year-long lease on this place. 

He hears a truck, on the other side of the building. Back in Louisiana, a truck meant Vas. But out here, most of the parking spaces in this complex have old pick-ups. Probably not Vas, anyway. It’s only five. Vas doesn’t usually get back until six. 

Vas doesn’t need to ring the doorbell either, but someone is. Not sure who it could be, Josh gets himself up and goes to answer it, sliding the chain off after he checks the peephole. It’s just Red, standing there with his hands in his hoodie pocket. “What are you doing here?” 

“Done at vo-tech,” Red says, coming in when Josh steps aside for him. “Vas at work?” 

“Yeah, but he’ll be back soon. Shoes off, they just cleaned the carpets.” Vas and him won’t stick to that for long, but it’s good to try. “You hungry, or something?”

Josh was always hungry when he was seventeen, both times. Mines versus foster care, he’d take foster care any day, but he’d still never gotten enough to eat. And he’s got no idea where Red was before he showed up at the ranch, but wherever it was, he’s still too skinny for his frame. Maybe just because he’s still a teenager, and he got too tall too fast, maybe not. 

“Yeah.”

Josh makes him a sandwich. Red watches him do it, because Josh is kind of convinced Vas and Red are secretly the same person. “Chicken’s already dead, man, it ain’t going anywhere,” Josh tells him, spreading butter on the bread while the pan heats. “You eat cheese, right?” 

He looks at the cheese on the counter. “That kind.” 

“You better, that shit’s expensive.” The thing about not ever getting good food growing up is that once Josh could afford it, a decent chunk of his money went to groceries. “How was vo-tech?” That had been part of the deal that had gotten brokered about school; Raven wasn’t a hundred percent behind the homeschooling plan, and the concession had been that Red had to take a vo-tech program. Something about getting him properly socialized. 

If it’s working, Josh ain’t seen any sign of it. Red’s just as pissed off as he was before. Not like Josh can blame him. He never liked being talked to like a kid even when he really was a kid. This time around, when he’d been a sixteen year old on the outside, with a grown man’s fucked up memories inside, nothing had gotten him madder than being talked down to. 

Only time Red seems to be in a halfway decent mood is when he’s over here. Still looks at his phone a whole lot, but he’s talked to Josh about that some. Can’t be healthy. But hell, Josh took up with a man he’d known for a week in a past life, and moved across state lines with him to live around a bunch of other crazy people, so who the fuck is he to judge on what’s healthy?

Well, he knows Red needs to eat. So he makes him a grilled sandwich on the cast iron skillet, then sits at the table with him. Red and Vas might both eat like they’re starving, but Red’s at least polite about it. 

“You done anything about that?” he asks, after Red’s finished and looking at his phone again. Red shakes his head, which means no, he’s still being a stalker. “Vas’ll be home in a bit. You looking to talk to me or him, or you just want company?”

“Company.” 

“Alright, then.” He’s leaving that alone. Red’s business is his.

Besides, it’s getting closer to Vas getting home. Let it not be said that Josh is a bad boyfriend; amongst the skills he’s picked up in this life, cooking is one of them. That one had less to do with making something of himself this time around, and more to do with actually enjoying parts of it. First time, he lived on cigarettes and whiskey. If he hadn’t gone out in a blaze of glory, he’d of probably drank himself to death soon enough, and that’s if cancer hadn’t gotten him first. Jesus knew he’d already been coughing more than he liked by the time Sam Chisolm showed up. Had a hard time keeping his balance even when he was sober too, and he knows now that had been a sign his body wouldn’t have been able to take the whiskey too much longer. 

As soon as he’d gotten himself out of foster care in this life, he’d gone into the nursing program. And as soon as he’d started getting paid, he’d started teaching himself how to cook. Passed the time, and there was a kind of pride he got out of getting it right. Feeling like he could do something like normal people did. 

Problem was, his personality hadn’t changed all that much between then and now. That worked for him when he was at the hospital; not as much in his personal life. He’d been doing everything right this time, but he hadn’t been any less alone in the world. Didn’t seem all that fair. 

Then Sam showed up. And after him, Vas.

And well, even if it was fucking crazy, these were the only people Josh had ever gotten along with, that had seemed to like him alright too, so what did he have to lose? Not a whole lot. The only thing he’d had going for him back in Louisiana was his career, but thinking about all those years stretching out in front of him, on his own, that hadn’t looked all that great, not when compared to a chance at a life with Vas. 

There’s something reassuring about being near Sam too, he has to admit. He’s not that much older than Josh, not this time, but Sam still feels almost like what Josh would guess having a father figure is like. He doesn’t need one of those, but having someone like that, that’s kind of nice. 

If Sam’s like having a father, he guesses Red is kind of what having a little brother is like. Goody kind of is too, this time. Josh isn’t all that sure what he’s supposed to do, if they even feel the same way, but he feeds them when they show up. That seems about right. And he doesn’t push either of them about the shit they clearly don’t want to talk about. Far as Josh is concerned, they’re just as entitled to their privacy as anyone else. 

He gets it, anyway. It’s not his situation, but he gets it. 

“You still hungry?” Red nods, so Josh adjusts the measurements in his head. 

He never had much of a head for the literature part of school, even this time around, had struggled through the required English, but math has always been easy. Math is solid. Cooking, like science, is just applied math, and some luck. He always had a curious abundance of luck in certain arenas. Mostly the ‘not getting killed’ arena. Right up until the end. Had to catch up with him eventually. 

He’s a respectable citizen this time around. He doesn’t need his luck to keep him alive anymore. Vas though, Vas has always got to paint a damn target on his back. Last time around, he’d ended up with a bounty on his head because he couldn’t just mind his own damn business, and now he’s a fucking cop who still can’t just mind his own damn business. Josh would swear on his own grave he never slept a full night in Louisiana after Vas found him again, worried that it would be that night that Vas got himself killed, pushing the wrong person too far, or sticking his neck out for someone who didn’t deserve it. 

New Mexico is _quiet_. It’s mostly teenagers getting drunk and spray-painting public property. And no one trying to shoot Vas. Josh might not buy into Vas’ weird optimism about this whole thing, but he thinks he’s allowed to ask for that much. Give his luck to Vas, keep him alive and whole. 

“How come you cook?” 

He wonders if Red was like this back the first time. “Why don’t you? You’ve got two hands.” 

“Other people do it.” 

“What’d you do when you were on your own?”

Red shrugs. “What is this?” 

“Chicken with shallot-thyme sauce.” Requires zero thinking to make, and Vas loves it. 

“What’s a shallot?” 

“Are you fucking with me?” Red shakes his head. “It’s a kind of onion. Only sweeter. You really don’t know what a shallot is? Don’t you like, live outside half the time?” Raven had said something about Red sleeping in the old dorm for the ranch hands when it was warmer out. Josh wouldn’t see what the problem was, except it didn’t really have a roof anymore. “You should know what you can eat without killing yourself.”

The chicken is almost ready to be turned, but not quite. “I think we had our own word for them. I don’t remember it. Probably didn’t then. I wasn’t good with plants.” He leans against the doorframe, watching the pan, maybe. No, looks like he’s thinking. Josh doesn’t interrupt him. He’s starting to figure Red out, and he mostly just likes being allowed to talk at his own pace. “I liked the horses. Took to them.”

“Red, I don’t know if this is offensive or not, but I never met a Comanche who didn’t take to horses.” 

“‘Lords of the Plains’,” Red says quietly. “It’s not offensive. We were. Not all of us. But we were known for it. Weren’t we?” 

He thinks about it, trying to remember just what he’d known about the Comanche. “Think you were mostly known for being scary as fuck.” That gets Red to smile, and Josh chuckles. “Yeah, don’t get too full of yourself. Ain’t how it is no more. Even the reservation cops frown on scalping these days.” 

“Depends on who’s getting scalped.” 

Josh turns the chicken, takes a second to eye Red. “You never scalped anyone.” Red holds his eyes for a minute, then shrugs and shakes his head. “You know how I know that?” Again, Red shrugs. “‘You made quick kills. And you didn’t give a shit after they were dead. You didn’t count coup, or whatever.” 

“You did.” 

“Yes, I did. Couldn’t let Vas win.” Damn that had been stupid. He’d been hungover and tired as fuck from the combination of drinking and riding for as many days as he had, but he’d already had Vas filling his head up. Only known him for a couple of hours, wasn’t even sober enough to tell just what he was after, but damn, Vas had already infected him, spreading through him and heating him up faster than any fever. “But I was an asshole like that.”

Probably doesn’t need to be said he’s still kind of an asshole. Just not the kind interested in killing folks, not anymore. Wasn’t all that interested in it the first time, honestly. He’d just been doing what needed to be done for him to survive. 

“Set the table,” he tells Red. “You know where shit is.” 

Red does as he’s told, and Josh hears Vas’ keys in the door right when he’s setting everything out. He goes to meet Vas, watching him sit on the floor to get his boots off after he’s hung up his coat and his hat. Vas still refuses to get a real coat. Personally, Josh thinks he’s just too damn vain to wear a Carhartt jacket, but he’s been saving up some money to get him a sheepskin. Will fit into Vas’ whole _vaquero_ aesthetic, and keep him warm. 

“I’m going to build us a bench for this,” Vas says, holding out a hand so Josh will help him up. “There’s enough tools left over to get the old workshop running on the ranch. Raven says she don’t care what I do with it.” He slides his hands over Josh’s waist, pulling him closer so he can kiss him. “Make us a bench, maybe a better table. There’s some good wood around here. Could even make a bed frame. Like real people.” 

Josh doesn’t know if he cares, long as they have a bed to sleep on. “Whatever makes you happy, babe.” 

Vas just smiles at him, kissing him again. “I smell dinner,” he says, against Josh’s mouth. “That makes me happy, _mi vida_.” He’s getting a little handsy now, kissing Josh’s jaw. “How long will it keep?”

“We got company,” Josh tells him, putting a stop to it, Vas huffing against him. “Hey, don’t look at me, you’re the one that wanted them around.” He pats Vas’ side holster. “Go put that in the lockbox. Now.” He already doesn’t like having a handgun in the house. There are statistics about that kind of thing that aren’t in their favor. 

“We are the kind of people -” Vas starts, but Josh is already shoving him towards the bedroom. 

“Yeah, that’s nice. Lockbox. Now.” 

It’s paranoid. He knows damn well it is, but he’s seen too many people coming into the emergency room with bullet holes in them thanks to ‘accidents’. And one of the last things he remembers from Rose Creek, right before his own blood loss and adrenaline had turned everything into a blur of bad decisions, was Vas bleeding. Josh ain’t looking for a repeat of that. Bad enough the idiot fell off a fucking roof. That alone should have told him that just because the world’s changed, doesn’t mean Vas has, and Josh should have followed his instincts and stayed the fuck away. 

Not that his instincts ever got a say when it came to Vas. He’s pretty sure they’d been screaming at him through the whiskey that Vas was a bad idea the first time, too.

“Hey, put that back.” Red’s got a beer in his hand. “You’re underage.” 

“I don’t like it,” Red says, putting the bottle down at Vas’ spot. “Didn’t then, either.” 

“Yeah, well, it was beer or bacteria.” He can’t remember ever drinking water the first time. Everyone knew you didn’t drink water unless you had to. Made people sick. 

Red shrugs, his phone out again. “Your people sucked at making alcohol.” 

“Fuck you, I’m Irish. That’s like, one of the only things we’re good at. I didn’t have anything to do with that bathtub rotgut that was going around.” It’s funny. Even though he’s never really smoked in this life, he catches himself bringing his hand to his mouth when he’s not thinking about it. Muscle memory from muscles that he doesn’t have. 

When Vas joins them, he’s changed into flannel pants and a thermal shirt, his face damp. He ruffles Red’s hair, and bends to kiss Josh on the temple before he sits, like something out of a fifties sitcom. “What did you do to your ears?” he asks, hitching his chin at Red. 

That tone don’t spell nothing good. “You’ve seen plugs before, Vas,” Josh says. He hadn’t even really noticed the things until now. 

“Has Raven?”

“I’m not a child,” Red says. 

“And they’re his damn ears,” Josh points out. “Eat your dinner. Leave it alone.” 

“Raven signed the form.” And that settles that. However it came about, Raven and Jack are Red’s legal guardians. If they say it’s fine, it’s fine. Vas puts a mother hen to shame when it comes to Red, but there ain’t nothing he can really do. 

The argument drops for then, they eat, and Red goes home, but when they’re getting ready for bed, it comes back up. “He can’t be doing that shit,” Vas says, throwing Josh off for a minute. “He’s got to get a job at some point.” 

Jesus fucking wept. “Vas, you’re not his dad. Hell, you’re only, what? Five years older this time?”

“You don’t get this, Josh. It’s different for us. White boys do that shit, they get to be kids being kids. Red does that shit -”

“Yeah, I work in a fucking hospital, Vas, I’ve got front-row seats to the racial issues in this country, alright? And in case you forgot, some of the kids I’ve patched up are in the emergency room thanks to your brothers in blue, so don’t start this shit with me.” They’ve had this argument a couple of times, and Vas knows this is a quick way to piss Josh off. He’s not looking to have a repeat tonight. “They’re little. If he gets bored with them, he can take ‘em out and they’ll shrink. It’s not a big deal.” 

“Why the hell does Raven let him do whatever he wants?”

“Probably because he’s going to do whatever he wants anyway.” And she doesn’t need the stress. Not that he can tell Vas about that. So far the circle of people that knows about Raven and her hopefully upcoming good news is comprised of Raven and himself. She hasn’t even told Jack yet. Too early. She wants to wait until she’s out of the risky window before she gets anyone else’s hopes up. “Look, babe, he’s not a kid. And he’s got all that shit going on his head right now. Frankly, if getting a tattoo will cheer him up, I’ll take him myself.” 

Vas sits down on the bed, giving him a look. “He had some, the first time. Don’t think he won’t be getting them back as soon as he can.” 

“Everyone’s got tattoos nowadays. I’ve got one.” He kind of says that just to manipulate Vas out of this fight; he got his tattoo on impulse when he was nineteen, an Aztec-style sun on his collarbone. He’d been lonely, and missing Vas, and yeah, it had been stupid and he’d regretted it. Right up until Vas saw it. 

“Josh,” Vas says now, getting Josh by the waist and pulling him down so Josh is straddling him on the bed. “Don’t, I’m trying to be angry. It doesn’t work if you start giving me reasons not to be.” 

“Shuts you up, don’t it?” Also gets Vas stretching out the collar of Josh’s shirt, trying to get a look at the ink there. 

“ _Mi vida, mi vida, mi vida_ ,” Vas mutters, kissing the edge of the tattoo. “You know what this told me? Do you?” 

“That I slept you with on the first date?” If you could even call it a date. 

Vas laughs, scooting back on the bed, and Josh rolls off of him, getting comfortable. He only gets a second before Vas is on top of him, pushing at the hem of Josh’s shirt. “No. It told me you were a _liar_ , all your bullshit about not letting the past define us, not getting swept up in my crazy…” He kisses Josh, slow and lazy. “You missed me, too.” 

He can admit he has a hard time talking about his feelings, hell, just being open in general. Josh doesn’t like being vulnerable, never has. It’s too much, most of the time, makes him feel spiky and mean. It’s easier to just do things for Vas, like cooking him dinner, getting him to stop smoking, shit like that. Talking about it though, that’s just not something he can do real easily. 

Vas is always the exception to his rules. “Yeah. I missed you.” 

He missed all of it; missed feeling like he belonged somewhere. That he had friends, people to talk to about shit, that he could rely on. That he could be relied on. Josh had never had that last time, not until that last week. It had just been him. Hadn’t had it this time either, but it had been worse. This time, he’d remembered what it felt like to have it. To have someone like Vas. 

Everything Josh had managed to get in either life, he’d had to take, and not always by the best means. When he was seventeen the first time, he’d been working on getting himself out of the mines by any means necessary, and one night, his luck had finally given him a perfect hand. A mostly-fresh horse, still saddled, and an overseer, passed out drunk in the paddock, his winnings from the night in hand. Josh had helped himself to both, and the man’s guns too, and by morning, he’d been two towns over, with a different horse, and new clothes. Going west had been his only plan, getting out further into the territories. Running away to the wild west, and hoping no one ever found him again.

He’d made himself sick, three days after he’d escaped. It had been the first time in his life he’d been able to eat as much as he wanted, actual food that tasted like something. Butter had been a revelation. Eaten too much though, and ended up losing it out back of the boarding house, the cold rain soaking through his new clothes, and right into his boots. 

This time, it had been foster care he’d had to get himself out of. A sob story like his made for good financial aid this time around at least. Didn’t translate into housing, but Josh had made that work too, through methods he ain’t exactly chomping at the bit to share with anyone.

But especially not Vas. He hadn’t wanted to tell Vas. But he had. He’d told Vas everything for the same reason he’d followed him out here. Vas is the only thing he never had to fight for or steal. He’s the only person that just gave whatever he had to Josh, and whatever Josh is, in any life, that’s always seemed like enough for Vas in return. There’s a lot of people that don’t know just how much that’s worth, finding someone like that, but Josh ain’t one of them. 

“Hey,” Vas says, getting his attention. “Where’s your head at?” 

“Sorry. I’m tired.” Ain’t even a lie, he is tired. He’s not even sure he’s in the mood for sex right now. Vas is usually pretty good at persuading him towards that way of thinking, but Josh doesn’t think he can get there tonight. Not for himself, at least. If Vas needs something, he’s not opposed to helping him out. 

Not tonight, apparently. Vas gets off of him, lying down and encouraging Josh into his space. “You okay?” Vas asks him. 

He asks Josh that a lot. Like he’s checking in. Josh doesn’t know how many ways he can say it, before Vas gets it through his head. “I’m just tired, Vas.” 

“Tomorrow’s payday. Why don’t we order in for dinner?”

“We still got to buy a dresser.” They can only live like this for so long before it starts getting annoying. 

“Why don’t I cook then?”

Josh closes his eyes. “You’re not going to feel like it by the time you get home.” He doesn’t blame him. Josh usually takes the early shifts, gets off at two, and has time to lie down and shit before other stuff needs to get done. “Sam was wondering if we wanted to go over to the ranch this weekend, actually. Told him I’d ask you.” 

That’s always a good time, even when it isn’t. There’s something steady about it, being able to go over there, see their friends. Sit and visit with them, even if half the time they either end up getting roped into fixing shit, or just sitting around in the living room, not doing much of anything. Josh likes playing Scrabble with Goody, if anything. Drives Goody up the wall that Josh knows as many words as he does now. 

“Me and Red can take the horses out,” Vas says, rubbing Josh’s back the way he likes. “We need to check the fences on the north lines. Jack says they need to be repaired, once spring comes. I need to see how much we’re talking about.” 

The ranch ain’t been a real working ranch for years. Belonged to Raven’s grandfather apparently, but her parents hadn’t kept it up when the money dried up. Way she told it, they just plain hadn’t wanted to live like that. It shows. Only building in good shape is the house, these days. But they’ve got the new barn, and the goats. Got four horses. And the fucking chickens. Josh hates chickens, and the feeling is mutual. 

The horses though, Josh likes them. Only companion he’d had for years was Wild Jack. Vas claims he was a menace that was only good for glue, after Josh was gone, but Vas hadn’t understood him. Wild Jack had been a good horse, when he wanted to be. He’d been good for Josh, at least. “Hey, Teddy Q took care of Jack, right?” 

“Hm?” He feels Vas’ fingers dig into his back a little, a good kind of hurt. “Yeah. He was the only person your fucking _loco_ horse would let near him.” He sighs, breath heavy under Josh. “That’s how he was though. Horses trusted him. They knew he wouldn’t hurt them. Even Wild Jack. Used to piss me off.”

“Why’s that?”

“Wild Jack was all I had left of you, _mi vida_. And he wouldn’t let me anywhere near him. I used to try. Never had any trouble with horses before. They loved me. Not yours though. That motherfucker actually bit me.” He sounds bitter about that, but Josh kind of laughs. 

“Yeah, he was like that.” He hadn’t had a good life before Josh found him. Hadn’t trusted people. “He let him run?” 

“Mm-hmm,” Vas hums. “He was happy, Josh. Teddy used to put him in the paddock with the goats. They got along. The billy goat would headbutt him, and he’d chase the billy goat around. They did it all day. Sam and me used to sit on the fence and watch.” He’s told Josh this before, but he likes hearing it again.

“Not sure that’s ‘getting along’.” But Wild Jack probably had a good time. He’d never been happier than when he was out for blood. “You can’t take it personally. He was picky.” 

“No, he was fucking crazy.” Yeah, maybe he was that too. He’d been everything Josh had for awhile there though. His _loco_ fucking horse, that was loyal as hell to him. 

Be a nice way to spend the weekend, being out on the ranch. Weather’s still cold, but it’s been dry. They can probably get some work done on the west side of the house. Raven wants the three-season room ready by the time spring comes along. Mostly, Josh thinks she just wants to quarantine Goody and his paintings. That smell is soaking into the house. They’re pretty good though, Josh will give Goody that. And it gives him something to do other than mope. 

Gives Josh an idea. “We should let Goody paint the side of the barn. Or a wall, or something. Red could help him.”

“Would keep ‘em busy.” He rolls over, looking at Josh. “You sure you’re okay, _mi vida_?” 

“Why do you keep asking me that?” 

“I don’t know,” Vas says, sighing. “I just feel like...I don’t know. You only came out here because I wanted to. Because I wanted to be near Sam and Red again. I just want to make sure you’re happy. That’s kind of my thing, you know?”

He only calls Josh _his life_. So yeah, Josh knows that. “Don’t get sappy.”

“It’s only us in here, Josh.” 

“Ain’t the point.” He hides his face in the pillow, trying to figure out if he’s ready to sleep or not. Never had to think much about that the first time. He was usually asleep by the time his head hit the pillow. Or passed out. The latter a little too often. “I didn’t have a lot going on for me back in Louisiana, Vas. About the only thing I miss is that taco truck that used to park by the hospital.” 

It’s true enough. He didn’t like Louisiana much. Too humid. Too many people. And while Josh doesn’t like talking about it, his claustrophobia had carried over something bad into this life. There was always something about Louisiana, about the swamps, and the city, that had rubbed him the wrong way. Couldn’t even say why he had stayed as long as he had, except that he hadn’t been able to think of any place else to go, until Vas came along. And this idea, to go to New Mexico. 

Here, there’s sky. Mountains. They’re reassuring. Seeing the end of the world, not just a whole lot of everything stretching out into nothing. But they don’t box him in, don’t suffocate him. Not like the city did. 

“Hm,” Vas says. “You and Raven should make us tacos this weekend.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

He spends Saturday morning on the roof of the three-seasons room, freezing his ass off, while him and Red replace the couple of tiles that have cracked. He’s never done work like this in this life, but his hands remember from the last time. And Red’s always been full of surprises, regarding what he knows how to do. Down below, Vas has got Goody helping him with the floor. Walls are still solid at least, but stone is like that. They’ll need to put in some new wiring, Vas has said, but the plumbing is still good. There used to be a sink in the room. Just pipes in the wall now. They can put a new one in. 

The work doesn’t do his back any favors, but it don’t take long. Tile roofs aren’t like those ones on track houses. Last a lifetime, or more. 

Saturday afternoon, he spends in the kitchen with Raven, kitchen radio tuned to an old country station. Josh can’t say he hates it, but still. “You think any of ‘em even know what they’re singing about?”

“This is old school country,” Raven says. “Most of them actually grew up on farms, or up in the mountains.” She knows what he means, though. “They grew up on stories of cowboys. Nice dream for them, thinking of taking off into the sunset, not having to answer to nobody. Not their fault they didn’t know. Lord knows, a lot of them met bad ends anyway. Drank themselves to death.” 

“So they did live the dream,” Josh jokes, putting tortillas on the griddle. “Ain’t that how it goes? Be careful what you wish for?”

“I guess,” she says. “Didn’t you go out in a blaze of glory?”

“There was a blaze.” He doesn’t really remember that part. Blood loss. And he probably had one hell of a concussion after he’d taken that tumble. 

She laughs, goes back to chopping tomatoes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, but I was a little too dead for the glory part.” 

He really doesn’t remember. Sometimes he thinks Vas doesn’t believe him when he says that. But he doesn’t. He remembers riding out, remembers the fall. The dynamite, in his hand, and he remembers kind of laughing, but maybe that was only in his head. The rest is just what he’s been told, not really his memories at all. 

The knife doesn’t stop on the chopping board. “Jack doesn’t talk about it much. He told me, way back when, but not really. Just said he died doing God’s work.” 

“I wasn’t there.” Vas had told him that Denali took out Jack, but then he’d had to tell Josh which one was Denali. McCann had been the asshole he was particularly concerned with killing. He hadn’t learned anyone else’s names. “But if there’s a God, taking out Bogue was definitely on his list.” Had been Emma Cullen who took care of that in particular, according to Sam and Vas. Shot him dead to rights, from fifteen paces, at a shitty angle with bad light. Hadn’t even nicked Sam. Her daddy really did teach her how to shoot. 

“Red Harvest killed the man who killed Jack,” she says, for whatever reason. Josh already knew that. “I wasn’t a fan of murdering anybody, but that did give me comfort. To know he didn’t get away with it. My man’s a mess on a good day, and he was probably a whole lot worse back then, I know that, but he’s still _my_ man.” 

He gets that. “Do me a favor, check on those carnitas, yeah?” They smell fine when she lifts the lid on the slow-cooker. “They ready for the pan?” 

“Think so.” 

While she takes care of that, Josh puts the tortillas that are done in the basket, covers them, starts warming up some more. “That why you let Red get those gauges?”

“He’s a grown man, even if he only looks halfway there. Besides, Comanche were like that, if I remember right. Always painting themselves up. Things like that. I’m not going to tell him what he can and can’t do with his own body. He’s a good kid, for the most part. Him and Goody both.” She pauses, stops and leans on the counter, getting Josh’s attention. 

“You need to sit down?” 

“Just nausea. Whoever called it ‘morning sickness’ was a dirty liar, let me tell you.” This she whispers, after looking around. “Are you sure there’s nothing for it?”

“Not unless it’s a problem,” he reminds her. “Sit down. Drink some seltzer.” 

She does as she’s told, and he spreads some butter and sugar on a tortilla for her. There’s no magic cure, but having something small and plain in the stomach helps, in his experience. That and ginger, but Raven can’t stand the shit, so that’s out. “I don’t remember it being like this the first time.” 

“That ain’t a bad thing.”

She doesn’t say anything, chewing on the tortilla while he cooks. Not like there is much to say; or maybe she’s just still fighting down the urge to be sick. Probably the latter. And anyway, the rest of the house is starting to wander on in, looking for food, so they can’t talk about it anymore. 

Vas comes up behind him, in just his undershirt, his tee tucked into his jeans, wrapping his arms around Josh’s waist and rubbing his face against Josh’s cheek, his stubble bristling. “Smells good, _mi amor_.” 

“Unlike you.” He doesn’t elbow him off just yet though. Lets him stay for a minute. “You need a shower.” 

“ _You like it_ ,” Vas whispers in Spanish, kissing Josh on the shoulder. 

So what if he does? They’re in a house full of fucking crazy people. Hell, they’re fucking crazy. 

So what, if this is what it takes for Josh to finally feel like he might actually be happy?

By the time spring starts, the three-seasons room is done, and full of Goody’s art crap. It’s Josh’s idea, so he gets stuck on babysitting duty when the weather starts to warm up enough that Goody, and Red, can paint the side of the barn. He’s pulled his shoulder at work anyway, so he’s not really fit to do much but sit in the lawn chair and keep them from killing each other. 

Raven’s showing by then, not enough it’s a problem for her to get around, but enough that Jack’s fussing over every little thing she does. She’s more interested in names. They’re having a girl this time. Doesn’t seem to bother them. Says maybe that’s who their child would have wanted to be the first time. Or maybe he’s just not here yet. 

Josh chooses to stay out of it. He’s never known all that much about kids, in any life. Besides, they’re happy. 

“You named your horse after yourself?” he asks Goody, when Goody shows him what the barn is going to be eventually. His horse, the one he had before, and another. It’s all shadows and impressions, really. Almost like cave paintings. “Seriously?”

“I thought it was funny,” Goody defends himself. 

“Did Billy?” When Goody nods, Josh shakes his head. “There’s some solid proof he loved you, right there.” Like there was any room to doubt. Even drunk and caught up in his own shit, anyone who was looking could see what Billy and Goody were to each other, including Josh. “‘Cause it ain’t funny, is what I’m saying.”

“Neanderthal,” Goody scoffs. “Bonne Nuit was a good name.” 

If he says so. 

Between Goody and Red, the mural shapes up quick. Keeps them both busy, like Josh thought. And helps them both start talking. Not necessarily to Josh, but to each other at least. Which works. They’re the same age in this life, and they’ve got at least one important thing in common. Red might not be able to talk about that with Josh, or Sam, or even Vas all that much, but from where he’s sitting, watching, he can see Red saying things to Goody. Maybe it’s about Teddy. Maybe it ain’t. But he’s saying something, and slowly, Josh sees some of that weight he’s carrying around lifting. 

For both of them. 

He’s just out of the shower, hair still wet, his shoulder hurting a little less thanks to the water, when Vas tells him that the paper is doing a thing on local artists, and wants to come out to the ranch, take pictures of the barn, and Goody’s other stuff. “They gonna pay either of them?”

“Red doesn’t want anything to do it,” Vas says. “It would involve talking to strangers.” 

“So no money?” 

Vas shakes his head. “Nah. But Goody wants to do it. Thinks it’s a good idea to get his name out there. How many Goodnight Robicheaux’s can there be?” 

God, that name. “Can’t believe someone named him Goodnight twice. Red Harvest, I get. But Goodnight?” He doesn’t talk much about his parents, but Goody’s mentioned his mother passed away, and she was responsible for the _Goodnight_ part. “What kind of hippie was his mom?” He doesn’t really wait for an answer to that one. “So, thinking we should be expecting Billy soon?” 

“Sooner or later,” Vas says, smiling. 

“Well,” _well_ , ain’t like there’s anything to do with that. “Alright then. Even money says we get another mouthy little brat to deal with.” Not that he minds. 

No, he doesn’t mind, he thinks, sitting on the bed behind Vas so he can rest his head on Vas’ shoulder, Vas’ hair brushing his face. 

There was never a chance he would have this, least that’s what he’d always thought. That he would get the kind of thing Billy and Goody had, way back when. Men like him didn’t get friends, family. It had seemed to hold up in both lives. Right up until the very end there, that first time. When he fell in with a bunch of people at least half as crazy as him, who hadn’t seemed to care. When he found Vas, laughing at him and his bullshit. 

And this time, when he was so lonely it didn’t even hurt anymore, right up until five am in the emergency room, seeing Vas’ face again. Feeling everything he’d felt then, coming right back around and hitting him like a freight train, that damn tattoo burning on his chest. 

He’d slept with Vas on the first night in Rose Creek. Slept with him on the first date in Louisiana. Only this time, this time hadn’t felt like a first time. Had felt like getting something back, finding what he’d been waiting for the whole time. So yeah, maybe it was crazy. Maybe they’re all just crazy. But Josh had followed Vas out here, because he’s not losing him this time. 

“Hey,” he says, quiet. Even though it’s just them. “Are you good?” 

“Yes, _mi vida_ , I’m good. Why?” He turns, just enough they’re almost kissing. 

“Nothing. Just checking. That’s kind of my thing.” Josh makes it a real kiss, because that’s something he gets to do now. “I love you.”

Vas turns some, sitting between Josh’s legs and pulling one of Josh’s over his. “I love you, too, Josh. Every time, _mi vida_. I love you every time.”


	5. Billy

_One, two, three._

That’s all there is to knives, in any life. 

Hold, flick, close. One, two, three. 

This is a good knife. He’d stolen it from a pawn shop back in Colorado. Someone had put their initials into the handle. Stupid thing to do. But they’re not his initials, so that’s not his problem if he’s got to use it. He doesn’t have to use it right now. The idiots eyeing him right now aren’t going to do anything. Well, they won’t now that they’ve seen the knife, and seen that Billy sees them too. 

He closes the knife, and rolls it between his fingers, then grasps the handle and opens it again. One, two, three. 

The bell over the gas station door rings, and Teddy comes out, carrying a plastic bag and looking at his phone. The men standing outside the gas station look him up and down, but don’t move when they see he’s with Billy. Billy keeps his eyes on them. One, two, three. 

“I know I’ve told you that’s creepy. And illegal,” Teddy sighs, opening the driver side door and putting the bag inside. “I got you gummy sharks.” 

Billy had asked for them, so he smiles, waiting until Teddy has the car door shut before he goes around to the passenger side. Just in case the men standing around decide they want to try something. It’s something about Teddy. He’s too tall, but it’s the face, Billy thinks. The face marks him as an easy target. But that’s where Billy comes in. 

He got Billy two packs of gummy sharks and some of the gummy coke bottles too. Plus some strawberry soda. The good, Fanta kind. Not that Crush shit. And a new Bic. Billy rolls down the window before he uses it to light a cigarette, blowing the smoke out the window. They hit New Mexico at six last night, and had stayed at a motel. Not that Billy had slept much. 

No, he’s too wired, too _ready_. 

He knew he would find Goody. There is no world where he can’t find Goody. Everything that had conspired to keep them apart the last time had failed, and it would fail this time too. What was a couple hundred miles and some state lines compared to everything the world had tried the last time? 

And now he’s in New Mexico. Only hours away from Goody. And probably Sam, knowing Goody. He always finds his way back to Sam when he’s in trouble, and waking up like this, with all these memories, on his own, that’s trouble. 

“So, what’s the plan, here?” Teddy asks. “We just going to show up in town, start asking around for Goody?” 

“Don’t overthink it,” Billy tells him, flicking ash off the end of the cigarette. “How many ‘Goodnight’s can there be? That article said he was working out of that ranch, right? We just ask how to get there.” 

“Uh-huh,” Teddy says, nodding. “And what if no one wants to tell us because we’re strangers and small town people are paranoid?” 

Billy rolls his eyes. “Then we ask for Red Harvest. Bet half the town wouldn’t mind someone coming after him.” Low blow, but it shuts Teddy up for a minute. It’s not like they even know if Red Harvest is there. If he is though, it’s probably true. Billy had liked him that first time for a reason. They were a lot alike. “What you need to worry about is your moms. I think they’ve called you like, thirty times.”

“Four times,” Teddy corrects him, merging onto the highway. “Which, honestly, is better than I expected. They’ve never let me out of their sight for this long. Think the only thing that got my moms to agree to this is you being here to protect me.” 

He says it like a joke, but that’s definitely true. “Yeah, they pulled me aside before we left. Talked to me about that.”

“Seriously? For God’s sake, I’m six-one.”

Billy shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.” It hadn’t been anything big or dramatic, just Teddy’s moms, Wendy and Ruth, asking Billy if he could look out for Teddy. He didn’t blame them. Like he said, it’s something about Teddy’s face. People think they can fuck with him. Hell, Billy spends fifty percent of his time fucking with Teddy. It’s too easy. But he’s the only one allowed to do it, as far as he’s concerned, so he’d promised them both they had nothing to worry about. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he says, mocking Teddy now. 

The first time, he hadn’t cared one way or the other about Teddy Q. He was just Emma Cullen’s quiet shadow, another too-tall man in the little army Sam Chisolm had gathered up. Too gentle by half, as well. But he’d watched him, the way Billy watched everyone that came around himself and Goody. He hadn’t been able to get a good read on him, and it had interested him. 

Men like Joshua Faraday, Vasquez, Red Harvest, even Jack Horne, Billy understood those kinds of men. He was one of those kinds. They were men who survived, by any means necessary, and fuck anyone who crossed them. Even Emma Cullen had been carved from that kind of stone, and there’d been no mystery to her, not for Billy at least. He’d liked her.

Teddy Q. though, Billy couldn’t work out just what his angle was then. It’s different now. 

“You want one?” 

“I start smoking, my moms will kill me, and you. ‘Sides, I didn’t smoke the first time.” 

Billy takes another hit, and a swig of soda, passing the bottle to Teddy so he can too. “Why?” 

“First time I tried tobacco, I was eight? I ate some of my daddy’s chew. I threw up, ‘cause of course I did, and I just never tried it again.” That’s got Billy laughing, but he knows Teddy doesn’t mind. “Whatever, asshole, I was eight. I didn’t know you were supposed to spit it back out.”

“I miss chewing tobacco.” It hadn’t had the same satisfaction as a cigarette, but it had gotten the job done. Goody hadn’t liked him using it though. “Didn’t use it much. Goody wouldn’t kiss me after.” They’d both smoked more than their fair share of cigarettes, but Goody always claimed the taste of chew was different. Stronger, too sour. And Billy had liked kissing Goody more than he liked chew, so it had been an easy concession. “Did Red Harvest smoke?”

“Mm-hmm,” Teddy hums, changing lanes. Billy takes the opportunity to switch the radio station. “Not cigarettes. What did we call it then? Hashish?” Billy can’t remember exactly, his own vices restricted to tobacco and opium, and some memories might be strong, but others have faded over the years. He knows what Teddy means though. “Said it helped him sleep at night. Emma grew it behind the house. They all smoked it, honestly. But, umm…” He trails off, smiling, and Billy waits. “Same problem. I couldn’t stand the smell, or the taste, so he would only do it right before bed if he was mad at me. ‘Course, then he’d be high, and he’d be sorry for being an ass. And me being me, I’d give in and let him come to bed.” Billy takes the soda back, and drinks half of it in one gulp, his mouth dry, then puts the cap back on before putting it in the cupholder. The upholstery is dark, but strawberry soda will smell forever. 

There’s something unbearably funny about picturing Red Harvest being inebriated in any way, and acting sorry enough Teddy would forgive him, so Billy amuses himself with the thought for a minute. He decides to share something though, just to keep it even. “Goody got angry with me one time. We were in this town for a few weeks. Don’t even remember the name. But there were Koreans. I would drink with them, and there was this man.” Billy’s never been interested in women, and other men, the sort of men like him, had always been able to see the signs. “He liked me. And I liked the attention.”

Very few men had ever expressed genuine interest in him. An Oriental was good for some fun, but not as a companion. It had been flattering to his ego, the way the man had flirted with him, sought him out. And it had been easy to be around him, someone like Billy, who understood the parts of himself Goody couldn’t. 

“Goody was the jealous type?” 

“Not usually.” They’d been squabbling for a couple of weeks, was the problem, as all people do. Goody had been more troubled than usual, one of his bad periods, and he’d been snappish. It had rankled at Billy, and he’d started snapping back. “He had his reasons, that time. The man, I think he called himself Jim, he got bold. In front of Goody. Next thing I knew, he’d stormed off in a huff. Wouldn’t talk to me. And I didn’t want to talk to him.” 

“What happened?”

Nothing good, at first. “I didn’t behave well.” 

Teddy frowns. “You didn’t…?”

“I let him kiss me. I was drunk.” And that had put an end to any ideas Billy had about getting back at Goody. The man had kissed him, and Billy had realized, through the whiskey and whatever else he’d had too much of, that it wasn’t what he wanted. He was angry with Goody, frustrated with how complicated things were, but he still didn’t want to lose him. “I got back to the boarding house, somehow.” A miracle, considering how drunk he’d been. “I was very sorry. And Goody forgave me. And laughed at me.” 

In the morning, closer to afternoon, when Billy had finally woken up sober and hurting, it had been to Goody rubbing his back, humming some song. _“You are a mess, cher,”_ he’d said, combing Billy’s hair back from his face with his fingers. _“You’re lucky I love you so.”_

Because he had. Through all of it, all the hiding and worrying, all the problems, Goody had loved Billy so much it had been almost able to be held in his hands, a tangible thing. He had loved Billy, and Billy had loved him. He had sometimes hated it, that his sorry heart couldn’t love another. But he had loved Goody. Loved Goody so much, he carried it all through that life, and into this one as well. 

The strands of their lives were tangled, impossible to separate. There was no point in trying, and Billy didn’t want to. He felt like he’d been pulled away, all this time, some force yanking on his own string, trying to rip him from the knot. It wouldn’t work. Couldn’t.

He’s missed Goody for so long. 

He was born in California this time, to a career military man and the wife he’d brought back from South Korea. The marriage hadn’t lasted, and his mother had taken him back to South Korea when he was two. That was where he had spent his childhood, in a crowded apartment, speaking Korean to his mother, and talking to his American father on the phone in English, unable to understand why he was so desperate to get back to California. 

Before his memories came back though, he had already known. He had known he needed to be in America. Something was already telling him he couldn’t stay in South Korea. What he needed wasn’t there. 

But he hadn’t meant for his wish to come true the way it had. 

He’d been nine when his mother died. The police had come to collect him from school, and he’d sat in the station for hours, trying to understand what was happening. Already, the world had been a confusing place, a mix of the long-ago past and the too-bright present, and then, just more confusion. She was gone, just like that. 

His father had come out on the first flight he could. There had been shouting, between him and Billy’s Korean grandparents, his own father’s Korean clumsy, but firm. He was a third-generation immigrant, too American for them. Too American to take their grandson away. But he had the right, and he did, and he had taken Billy home with him to America. To Colorado, where he had settled after leaving the Air Force, to be a police officer.

And things had been good. His father had doted on him, in this life. He wasn’t the same man as Billy’s father had been the first time, but it hadn’t mattered to Billy. Even with the memories of last time, even if he was already missing Goody, he’d loved his father too. He’d wanted everything for Billy, and tried to give it. They’d been happy, as happy as Billy could be, with everything from a century past clawing its way to the surface. 

Things had been good, until they weren’t. Another day where the police came to collect him at school. But this time, he’d been fourteen, and the police officers had known his father. They’d wanted to tell him. They’d wanted him to understand how brave his father had been. That’d he saved two people’s lives. 

What Billy had understood was that this life was playing out much like it had the first time, with him left standing alone at far too young an age. 

But by fourteen, he remembered everything. He remembered _Goody_. Foster care could throw their worst at him, but he was staying in the U.S., and he would find Goody. He was never truly alone in the world, not when Goody was out there somewhere. 

Fate had a different idea in mind though, this time. Because he’d been fifteen when he was placed in another school, and he’d seen a skinny white boy sitting under a tree, reading a book, and had known him. Teddy Q., or _Theo_ , as his mothers called him. 

Teddy Q., who, like the first time, didn’t really question him. He had just done what seemed to come naturally to him, and had taken care of Billy. Fed him, did his laundry, gave him a safe place to sleep. Covered for him when Billy needed it, smoothed things over with teachers and other students. Helped him look for Goody. 

And Billy had done what came naturally to him; he took care of the idiot white boy that attracted trouble with every step he took. He’s still not entirely sure how that happens. In Goody’s case, it was because he could never stop talking when he really needed to. With Teddy, it just seems like people think they can push him around. That’s alright though. He’s got Billy this time, and Billy’s always made sure the assholes who thought Teddy was an easy target knew to expect his personal attention. 

They were bonded by Rose Creek, by what had happened, by the strangeness they shared in this life. But he’s fond of Teddy now for other reasons. Because Teddy is who he is, and somehow, he’s ended up being Billy’s best friend. 

What will Goody say about it? He’ll probably be happy Billy made a friend. He’d never been all that good at it. And now he has one, and he’s kept Teddy all on his own. 

What will Goody say about _any_ of this? They’re both so _young_ this time. They have so much more time than they did before, and they’re not starting from scratch. And the world is different. They can be open about what they are to one another. He doesn’t have to play the role of ‘servant’ this time when they’re out in public. 

He could hold Goody’s hand if he wanted to. Could touch him. Kiss him. Could even get married, one day. 

Knowing Goody, he’ll have way too much to say. And Billy will listen. He’s missed Goody’s voice, the cadence of his words, and he’ll listen to anything and everything Goody has to tell him when they get there. Will be able to fall asleep to it, for the first time in eighteen years. 

He can hold him, while Goody talks. He needs to. Billy needs to hold him again, have the solid proof in his arms that Goody is whole. 

The last time he’d seen Goody, it was his body shaking as the gun got him, Goody falling from the steeple. Billy’s vision had already been spotting, his head heavy, hands cold. He’d already lost too much blood, and he’d known it. That he was not going to come down from that steeple. Some part of him had always known that Goody and him were not going to make it out of Rose Creek, that the odds were stacked too high against them both. They’d already escaped death too many times. 

Goody’s owl had been following them for a long time. 

But it was what it was. And he’d died with Goody. There was little else he could have asked for, morbid as that was. He didn’t want to know what kind of man he would have become without Goody, wasn’t even sure he would still be one. 

Outside the window, the glass cold, the road stretches on and on, the mountains around them rising up and encompassing them. There were mountains in Colorado too, but they didn’t live near them. Goody had always liked the mountains. Said they made him feel insignificant. For him, that was a good thing. 

Billy likes them for the same reason. They made him feel small, and beneath the notice of any gods looking for him. There had been so many ghosts who had a bone to pick with Billy the last time. “What do you think of the mountains?”

“They scared me,” Teddy says. “I came out west when I was twelve. The war was over, but you wouldn’t know it in Missouri. It’s why I got sent away. First time I saw them, I just...I never imagined anything could be so _big_.” 

“And now?”

“I don’t know. I got used to them. Now I get nervous when I can’t see them.” 

His cigarette has run down, so he flicks the butt out the window. “How much longer?”

“Another two hours. And don’t ask me that again, it was old before we were.” 

“We never got to be old,” Billy reminds him. He hadn’t considered himself old, at least. 

“And you’ll still never get to be, you keep smoking.” 

He’s probably right, but Billy thinks he’s allowed his vices. “Whatever, Mom.” 

The road stretches out, then twists and turns ahead of them. The mountains grow closer, and the dirt changes. Turns reddish, rockier. Cars just move so fast. On a horse, he’d never even noticed the changes, they always happened so gradually. This trip alone would take weeks, would be dangerous. But now, it’s just a spring break trip. It’s amazing. Billy never would have believed this could happen, that the world could change so much. That everything could change, to this point, all of it to bring him to this. 

Eighteen years old again, sitting in a car, on his way to Goody. 

Fuck, he’s tired. He really didn’t sleep at all last night, but it’s catching up with him, the scenery outside the window hypnotizing. Carefully, he settles himself in the seat, head against the window and closes his eyes. He has two hours, maybe more. A little sleep won’t hurt. And it’ll help the time pass. 

He wakes up from a dreamless nap when Teddy shakes him. They’re in a strip motel parking lot, the door he can see through the windshield already propped open. Inside, the room is burning hot, the only relief coming from the cold spring air the open door lets in. Billy tries to move the thermostat on the wall after they get their stuff in, but it just slides, no noise from the vents at all. 

“‘Cause I didn’t think to try that? It’s broken. Better than freezing to death.” That’s true, so Billy leaves it alone. 

Someone has attempted a _theme_. The bedspreads are patterned with colorful zigzags, and the art on the walls is all cacti and mesas. There’s even a flower pot with an arrangement of succulents on the little breakfast table. Billy pokes at them, and finds out they’re real. He knows, because he pokes one of the flat-leaf cactuses in it, and a second later, feels the pain from the invisible hairs on it. 

He curses, shaking his hand, and Teddy grabs it, getting a look. “You are like having a really stupid cat sometimes, you know that?” 

“I thought it was fake,” Billy hisses, following Teddy to the bathroom, where he runs Billy’s fingers under lukewarm water. “Who puts a real plant in a motel room?”

“Apparently these people. They probably assume most people aren’t going to poke a cactus.” When he puts it that way, it sounds dumb. But Billy’s tired, and he’s not thinking straight. And he really did think it was fake. 

The water helps, and under the fluorescent light, Teddy can see well enough to get the soft hairs to come loose. Still stings. But the water does help. And Teddy’s apparently done this before; not in this life, but the last one, probably. “You’re lucky it was one of those soft ones. Don’t have to do much to get ‘em to shake loose.” 

Yeah, Billy doesn’t want to know what people do to get the other kind out. It probably hurts. And he wouldn’t remember anyway. That’s never been his thing, in either life. “How long are you going to stay?” 

Teddy shrugs, turning the water off, the faucet squeaking. “I’ll have to head home before school starts in two weeks. I’ll make sure you’re okay before I leave.”

Two weeks doesn’t sound like a lot of time, now that Billy thinks about it. “What if Red Harvest is here?”

“I still have to go home before school starts.” 

Billy doesn’t understand that. “Even if he’s here?”

“I don’t want to get into this. We’re here to find Goody.” This is the same line he’s used to shut Billy down the whole way here, and he still doesn’t get it. “I’m going to go talk to the front desk. This is a small enough town people probably know each other. Someone will know where that ranch is, or they’ll know someone who knows. And if we don’t find them today, we’ll have someplace to sleep, at least.” 

He leaves the door open. It’s too hot otherwise, so Billy doesn’t shut it behind him. 

Instead, he sits on the bed closest to the door, and grips the bedspread in his hands. He’s here. He’s in the same town as Goody. They’re only separated by a few miles now, and Billy will find him. Maybe even today. He doesn’t care if he has to tear this whole town apart, he’s going to find Goody. Once he does, everything will be fine. If not fine, better. 

His stomach suddenly rolls, and he throws up the gummy sharks. Makes it to the bathroom first, at least. Bad enough the room is so hot, that smell wouldn’t help anything, though he’ll probably be far from the first person to do it. The gummy sharks aren’t much in his stomach, but his body doesn’t seem to know that, caught in the gagging cycle until he sticks his head in the sink, gulps down some of the water, right from the faucet. It tastes strange, but he keeps it down. 

The water always tastes different, everywhere you go. He hadn’t been able to stand drinking water from the tap, when his father had brought him here to America. Not for years. 

After he’d met Goody in that bar, and after they’d gotten the hell out of town, there’d been a river. Not deep enough to worry, but moving fast enough it was clean. Mountain water, almost freezing cold. Billy had bathed in it, washing off the rest of the blood from his knuckles, the cold stinging and numbing them, scrubbed off the grime and the dirt from the too many days of not being allowed to sleep inside. Goody had bathed too, and Billy had seen the scars on his body, the kind earned from a life hard-lived. 

Soldier, old before his time, Billy had thought then. Had still been assessing Goody, the risk of him. He hadn’t known then, in that moment, that by the time he’d be ready to die, he’d be willing to risk everything and anything for Goodnight Robicheaux. That he’d be willing to die by his side, if it meant he stayed with Goody. 

He hadn’t watched Billy bathe that time. Kept his eyes to himself. 

It hadn’t been until they reached town, and Goody had paid for a real bath for the both of them, that he’d noticed Goody’s eyes on him. He’d been trying not to look, then. But he had been looking. And he’d kept looking, right up until the end. Billy thinks he might have been the last thing Goody really saw. He hopes so. Goody said he always felt better when he could see Billy, no matter what. 

“You alright, honey?”

It startles him. There’s a woman in jeans and a tee shirt with the motel’s name on it standing in the bathroom doorway, looking down at him. Native, he thinks. Maybe Hispanic. 

“Was passing by the door when I heard you. You okay?” 

He nods. 

“You sure? You want me to get the front desk, have them bring you something?” There’s a walkie-talkie on her belt, crackling with dead air. “It’s probably the elevation. Does it to lots of people. Once you get used to it, you’ll be fine.” 

Again, he nods, and after a second, manages, “My friend will be back in a minute. He’s already there.” 

“Tall, skinny, white boy?” she asks, leaning on the door frame. “Yeah, he’s up there asking about Raven’s place. John is giving him directions. You two know her?” 

He doesn’t know who the hell Raven is, and since he’s sitting on a motel bathroom floor, still flushed from being sick, he doesn’t bother lying. “Someone she knows, maybe. Goodnight? Or Sam Chisolm?” Everyone always knows Sam. 

She rolls her eyes. “Lord, I swear, she is letting that man start a damned cult up there. Last thing we need.” That doesn’t seem to be for Billy’s benefit, just her talking. “Yeah, there’s a Goodnight up there, and a Sam Chisolm. You some more friends of theirs?” 

He gets to his feet, using the sink. “Goody is there?” 

Now, she nods. She’s not much older than he is now, maybe twenty, but she still looks down her nose at him. But then, to her, he just looks like a dumb teenager. “Yes, he is, last I checked. Him and the rest of that pack of strays. John’ll tell your friend how to get there.” She makes to leave, but stops. “You sure you’re alright? We’ve got the anti-nausea stuff up at the front desk. Like I said, it makes a lot of people sick at first.” 

“I’m fine,” he says, nodding. He is. He will be. 

He hears her muttering to herself as she goes to her cart, something about, _“Lord, now they got themselves an Asian,”_ , and he laughs to himself, because she almost sounds like Faraday. _“Good, we got us a Mexican.”_

She said ‘pack of strays’. 

When Teddy comes back, Billy’s sitting on the bed again, still laughing. 

“I just got asked some real uncomfortable questions, so if you feel like sharing something funny, please,” he says to Billy, sitting down on the other bed.

“Our friends are here,” Billy tells him, stretching out across the bed so he can grab his cigarettes. “And also, we’re a cult.” 

Teddy nods, not looking all that surprised. “That does explain those questions. I just thought he was being nosy.” He smiles though, looking down at the floor. “You know, I used to pray that Sam and Vasquez wouldn’t remember? That they had something nice this time. But now that I get to see them again, I can’t even pretend I’m really all that sad.” 

He doesn’t see why he should be. They were his friends. “You get directions?” 

“I did.” Billy’s up on his feet, biting down on his cigarette while he lights it with the Bic. “Damn, give me a minute to stretch, I was the one doing all the driving, if you recall.” But he still follows Billy to the car, shutting the door behind him this time. “Would you calm down? He ain’t going anywhere.” 

No, but Billy is going to him. He’s been waiting eighteen years to get back to Goody, he doesn’t know how much longer he can stand it. Whatever happens after is inconsequential right now, a far-off thing he can’t even pretend to consider. What happens now is he gets Goody back. 

Teddy doesn’t really argue, probably never intended to. He rarely does. And no matter what he says, Billy knows he’s not the only one trying to get back to something. They both are. 

They see the barn before they see anything. Even from the road, it’s big, horses painted in motion. “Bonne Nuit and Charlie,” he says, to Teddy, or maybe just himself. Because it’s them, the impression of them, at least. 

“I know,” Teddy says, sounding strange. Far-off. When Billy looks at him, he says, “I took care of them, after you were gone, before we sold them. We kept Wild Jack, ‘cause...I don’t know, Faraday loved him, and I didn’t want to see him butchered. Which is about all he was good for, if we’re being honest. That horse would only behave for me, after Faraday was gone. But we couldn’t justify keeping those two. Didn’t have the money.”

There’s no blame there. One extra horse was probably pushing it for Teddy and Emma back then. Three extra would have been impossible. And Charlie and Bonne Nuit were good horses. “Did you get a good amount for them?”

“Don’t tell Goody, but Charlie sold for a lot more.” Yeah, Goody would probably be insulted by that. Bonne Nuit had been prettier, but she’d been a bit temperamental. Charlie had been easy-going. “I was sorry to do it. I always loved having more horses around. And I liked them both. But the money just wasn’t there.”

“Money doesn’t grow on trees. Neither does feed.” Besides, they weren’t work horses. There wouldn’t have been any use for them on a farm. “I didn’t name him. He came with it. Wouldn’t answer to anything else.” 

“Horses are like dogs, like that.” 

It’s all gravel roads out here, outside of the town proper, but the Jeep handles it, as Teddy makes the turn down one, the split-rail fences lining it passing by too fast and not fast enough at the same time. Billy is fidgeting, the knife in his hand again. 

_One, two, three._

Split-rail fences. He remembers Goody sitting on a hundred of them, while Billy won their rent money. Sometimes, Goody would draw while it was going on, little pencil sketches of the crowd, of the town, of Billy. 

_One, two, three._

He has very little, this time. Nothing to offer. He had less the last time, and Goody still wanted him. 

“This is insane,” Teddy says again.

“So are we,” Billy reminds him, folding the knife and pocketing it. “We made it this far.” 

“And God knows, I’ve followed more insane plans.” 

“You really have.” Just because Billy liked Emma Cullen didn’t mean he didn’t recognize how crazy she’d been. “You’ve got to learn how to say ‘no’.” 

Teddy sighs. “Well. Little late for that advice now.” 

There’s a man sitting on the porch of a sprawling half-stone-half wood ranch house at the end of the gravel drive, in a rocking chair of all things. He gets up when they stop in front of the house, walking down the porch steps. Billy doesn’t recognize him for a minute, but then the man shouts, “Teddy Q!” and before Billy can think to do anything, he’s off the porch, and sweeping Teddy up in a hug that has Teddy off the ground. 

“Hello, Vasquez,” he hears Teddy manage. 

“You’re so skinny!” It is Vasquez, Billy realizes. Young again, too. Only a little older than the two of them. “Jesus, look at you!” He cups Teddy’s face, not noticing Billy yet, it seems. “You found us!” He says something in Spanish, and holds Teddy tight. It’s when he does that, that he sees Billy. He steps back from Teddy, just a little, looking Billy up and down. “Billy?”

Billy shrugs, not sure what to say. 

“Yeah, I found him, too,” Teddy is saying, but Billy’s not really listening at this point. 

Vasquez is here. Vasquez is here, and that’s Sam Chisolm in the doorway now, coming down to grab onto Teddy too. He should have known they would miss him, even if Teddy hadn’t seemed to think so. 

It’s not the reunion Billy is here for, though. And Sam knows it, because he comes up to Billy, clasps his shoulder, and says, “He’s inside. God knows, he’s been looking for you something fierce. Couldn’t find hide nor hair of you though.” 

“Billy’s just a nickname.” It’s what his father had called him, in this life, his American name. 

“Figured as much. Wasn’t all that helpful.” No, probably wasn’t. 

Inside, down the hall, past a living room and a kitchen, there’s a three-seasons room that smells like paint, even from the hall. Sam stays there, in the hall, and Billy steps through the door. 

Goody’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, in a black tee shirt and jeans, his feet bare on the hardwood. He’s young, just like the picture showed, face unlined and clean-shaven, his hair still all dark blond, no grey yet. He’s looking down at the paper lying on the floor under him, paint on his fingers as he adds lines, sweeping across it. 

There’s a stereo in the corner, playing music, but Billy doesn’t hear it. It’s not important. 

“Goody,” he says. 

“Hm?” He doesn’t look up, frowning down at the paper. When Billy doesn’t say anything else, can’t, he does look up, finally. 

It’s a moment caught and pinned under glass, as Goody looks at him, sees him for the first time in all these years, Billy unable to move, just looking at him. Goody, right in front of him. Five steps, and not another minute lost, as Goody gets his feet under him, walking across the paper and right into Billy’s arms. 

He doesn’t feel quite the same, but that’s because they’re still young in these bodies. He’s still Goody, babbling in French and English, holding onto Billy like he always did when they had too close a call, when that owl swooped silently over their heads, but missed. He’s Goody, bright blue eyes too earnest in a life that didn’t deserve that kind of thing, looking at Billy like he’s the only thing that matters. 

“ _Cher_ , where you been?” he asks, his voice breaking. “Where have you been, Billy, I’ve been looking, _mon couer_ , I’ve been looking everywhere, I had Sam looking, but I couldn’t find you, Billy, I was looking and I couldn’t -”

He always did this when he was overwhelmed; talked too much, said the same thing over and over. Billy, by turn, could never find the words in English, would be reduced to Korean, trying to make Goody understand from just his tone, his touch. But this time, he’s been speaking English since he was born, and this time, he can say, “It’s alright, Goody. I found you,” reassuring Goody, and himself. 

“Damn it, Billy.” His fingers are hurting, digging in through Billy’s shirt. “Should have known. You always find me, don’t you?” 

“There’s not a lot of Goodnight Robicheaux’s,” Billy offers. There’s not. Out of all the names that circle around and fall in and out of popularity, ‘Goodnight’ has always been somewhat unique, every time. 

Goody laughs, his face in Billy’s shoulder. “I’ve been trying, Billy, I’ve been trying to get my name out there, so you could see it, but I didn’t know where you were, thought you were still in Korea this time, maybe.”

“Only for a little while. Not long. I’m a citizen now. Born in California.” That feels important. It’s definitely convenient. Might be more important later. Later, when it’s not now, when he doesn’t have Goody right here again. “I’ve been looking, Goody.” 

“I know, _cher_ , I just thought, maybe you wouldn’t be able to, so I came here to Sam, thought he could...I don’t know.” 

He doesn’t move back, couldn’t really, but Billy does raise his hands up so he can cup Goody’s face. “Where you go, I go, Goody.” And in this life, that meant crossing the Pacific Ocean, and leaving Colorado to come down here, to the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. “But why the fuck are you in New Mexico?” 

“Well, uh,” Goody laughs, his fingers in Billy’s shirt now. “We always did say we’d make a run for Mexico if things got too bad, didn’t we? Should have specified.” 

“I should have taken Spanish.” He should have taken it anyway. “I took French.” Sentimental. And not very useful. Not for anything other than to understand just what the hell Goody was on about when he was swearing in it. 

“Lord, Billy, are you saying you went to high school? _You_?” 

“Someone had to keep Teddy from getting jumped.” 

Now he gets that incredulous look from Goody, an expression he’s missed, like everything else. “Teddy? Teddy Q?” Billy nods. “Lord, _cher_ , I get the feeling you have quite a story to tell me.”

Billy looks around at the room, at the canvases and pinned-up papers. Horses, and mountains. Trees, and fences, long lines of split-rail fences. “Think you have one for me, too.” 

“ _Cher_ , now, you know I always got a story,” he says, running his hands down Billy’s chest. “Won’t even have to embellish. You won’t believe how I got out here. Funnily enough, it starts with a Spanish class.” 

They end up lying on the floor, in what little clear space there is, Goody sprawled across Billy’s chest. He’s gotten paint all over Billy’s shirt. Probably his skin, too. “You drove across state lines with Faraday and Vasquez?” That just sounds like a dumb idea in any lifetime. 

“Mm-hmm,” Goody answers, moving a bit, his hair tickling Billy’s face. Billy smoothes it down, but leaves his hand there, trying to burn the feel of it into his memory. “They’re a nurse and a cop now, can you believe that?”

“Which one is Faraday?” 

“He’s a nurse, if you can believe that. He’s actually pretty good at. And Vasquez is a pretty good cop.” Yeah, out of everything, Billy’s not wrapping his head around that any time soon. “Started some classes myself, but I’m just filling credits for now. Not sure what I’m going to do, beyond working here. Not that anyone’s stopping me. And it might be the middle of nowhere, but I like it out here.” 

There’s something very calm about this place. Billy already noticed that. It felt so old, despite the signs of progress. So much like their pasts, and their present. Electricity wired through buildings that might have been standing when Billy was here last, telephone poles mounted beside rocky formations thousands of years old. “Maybe this is where we belong.” 

“Think you might be right, _cher_. And Lord knows, Louisiana didn’t have much to offer this time either.” 

He can feel Goody’s heartbeat under his palm, his breath against Billy’s own. “I didn’t think you’d stay there. If you were there.” Goody had seemed to hate everything about Louisiana, and the memories it held, the last time. 

“How could I? You weren’t there.” 

“No. I’m here.” 

In his arms, Goody turns, so they’re looking at each other again. They’re both so young. Barely eighteen, the both of them. “I can’t believe you’re here, _cher_. Feels like I’m gonna wake up, and you’ll be gone again.” 

Billy shakes his head. “I’m not going anywhere, Goody.” He looks around the room. “Unless whoever owns this place is going to kick me out.”

“That would be Raven, Jack Horne’s wife. In this life, and the last, to clarify.” Well, that’s something. “This is her family’s ranch. Sam and Jack found each other first, when they were in the Army, and sometime during that, Jack found her. They all came back here, and well, you know Sam. He started gathering up the rest of us.” 

“Liar,” Billy adominishes. “He was looking for you.” Goody might be the love of his life, and vice versa, but Sam and Goody were as close as brothers. As family. 

“I am not,” Goody replies. “I’ll have you know he was looking for Vasquez and the rest too. Because why be crazy alone, when we can be crazy together?”

He looks so happy, in this moment, poised above Billy, smiling, teasing him. Billy never knew him this young, the first time, but Goody was never happy like this the first time, when he was this age. Goody was in the middle of the mud and the blood of a war, that time around. 

Now, now, he looks happy. “I want to stay with you, Goody.” He knows it can’t always be like this. They’ll fight plenty, and their old demons will still come to call. But right now, they’re just lying on the floor in this sun-filled room in New Mexico, and they’re young, and everything else feels a thousand miles away. “Just not in this room. I’ve gotten used to heating.” 

“I’ve got a fireplace,” Goody cajoles, and without asking, straddles Billy, Billy laughing. He’s lighter than he was, but Billy is skinnier too. Doesn’t have all the muscle he will have, given enough time. “And it probably works, if I ever remember to light it.” 

“Why are you still useless?” It was always Billy that had to do that kind of thing, when they stayed in rooms with wood stoves. “Why is every white boy I meet _useless_?” 

“Well, I don’t know what other white boys you been keeping company with, _cher_ , but I do seem to remember some uses you found for me.” He runs a finger down Billy’s nose. “I don’t want to hear if you’ve been getting the same uses out of any of them.” Only teasing. Billy knows that particular lilt. But he adds, more seriously, “Not that I’m going to be cross if you have been. I ain’t got that right.”

It’s been so long, and how long has Billy even been in this room? An hour, maybe two, but already he feels like he’s been lit up inside, recharged somehow. Connected, to the missing piece of himself. “You’re the only one with that right, Goody.” Goody’s the only person Billy has ever let own any piece of him. The only person he will let. 

“I couldn’t stand to touch another boy this time,” Goody confesses quietly to the floor. “Think you ruined me for anyone else, _cher_.” 

Now he understands what Goody is trying to tell him, and Billy smiles. He sits up on an elbow, and turns Goody towards him. Goody’s already closing his eyes, waiting, waiting for Billy, just like he always did. But this time, Billy doesn’t have to make sure the door is shut, that they’re truly alone. This is a new time, and here, Billy can kiss him without worrying they’ll get caught and face the consequences. 

He can kiss Goody like he should have been able to over a century ago, when he fell in love with this man. 

“Billy,” Goody breathes, against his mouth, his eyes still closed. “I have missed you so much, _cher_. Felt like my heart was breaking, every time I thought about you.” 

It’s just them in this room, so he can say, “Mine too.” And he can also say, “But I knew I’d find you.” It’s just them. “I’ll always find you.” 

Outside the door though, the world goes on, and Billy can hear other people in the house going about their business. He’s pretty sure he can hear Vasquez singing. And someone shouting at him to shut up. 

“You know people in town think this is a cult compound.” 

“I like to think of us more as a commune.” He’s playing with Billy’s hair now, pulling at the pen Billy put it up with earlier. “Jack’s doing sculptures. Vasquez is building furniture. Even got Red painting something other than his face these days. He helped me with the mural. We’re going to do something on the old dormitory as soon as we get it liveable. You should see what he’s done to the inside of it. In the meantime, there’s plenty of room for you, here in the house.”

“I’m fresh out of foster care, Goody, I don’t have a lot of options.” Not that he was ever planning on leaving Goody’s side again. “Do I have to learn how to paint?”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing you try.” He leans in, kisses Billy again. “You were always so good with your hands.” 

The world goes on outside the door. He’s almost positive that’s a woman shouting at Vasquez to shut the fuck up. Must be Raven. Billy guesses he’ll have to meet her, sooner or later. He’ll have to meet her, and get re-acquainted with the rest of them, too. 

He fit in with them all once before, when he didn’t fit in anywhere else. And he always fit right here, beside Goody. 

Gently, like Goody always deserved, always needed, he cups the back of Goody’s neck, running his thumb over Goody’s skin. “I could learn to paint.” 

And just as gently, the way Billy could never ask for, from anyone but Goody, Goody pushes Billy’s hair back from where it’s falling loose over his eyes. “Bet you could, _cher_. You got to do something, in this house, or you’re liable to go crazy.”

He could say something about how he’s pretty damn sure they started out that way, or make a joke. He could say anything right now, because it’s Goody. But it’s Goody, and Billy’s only kissed him twice now, and that’s not nearly enough. 

So he does that instead.


	6. Red Harvest

The horses are uneasy. There’s a storm coming, and they can sense it, their ears flicking back and forth as they all step back and forth in their stalls, trying to get his attention. Eowyn, a paint horse, and his favorite, if he’s going to choose, is the only one that stands steady, watching him with one eye. Gently, Red runs a hand down her neck, the solid muscle of her relaxed. Raven claims she’s half-deaf, at least, a problem in her breed, but Red’s not sure. Sometimes, he gets the feeling she hears just fine, she just doesn’t usually give a shit. 

Like now, she turns her head to look at West River, who’s talking the loudest. West River is always the first to let them know he’s not happy. He’s a good horse in bad terrain, able to pick his way through anything, but he doesn’t like storms. 

“Shhh,” Red soothes, turning his attention to him. “I’ll shut the door soon. Nothing will get you in here.” West River whickers, pressing his face against Red’s shoulder and pushing. “Knock it off. I can’t control the weather.” He still scratches West River’s neck, digging his nails in, letting the horse sniff his hair. “Storm will pass. Same as all the others.”

He’s finished what needed doing out here, but he checks on each horse one last time before he goes, then shuts and secures the stable door, in case the storm turns sideways. It’s coming down from the mountains, so it’ll mostly be snow and rain mixed. Nothing that’ll actually hurt them. It’s the change in pressure that makes them anxious. 

That done, he heads to the dormitory, not the house. He’s not in the mood to be stuck in the house. It smells like paint. Goody keeps forgetting to close the door to the three-seasons room. Claims it’s too cold. The sun is still out, shining bright, but it’s not doing much, winter still trying to hold on. Red doesn’t mind. Cold’s never bothered him. 

Teddy used to tell him he ran hot. It hadn’t been a complaint. 

Besides, Vas is in the house. Red’s not in the mood to deal with him, either. He’s been getting in Red’s business again, trying to get him to talk about shit. Red’s never in the mood for that to start with, and he’s sure as hell not feeling it today. And Red didn’t want to talk about it the first time, when he was actually happy. He doesn’t want to talk about it now, when Vas is the one that’s happy, and Red’s...whatever he is. 

He’s not _unhappy_. He’s just...Goody had a word for it. _Discontent_. Granted, Goody had phrased it with some Shakespeare crap. If Red never has to hear anything about fucking Shakespeare again, he might be a little closer to happy. 

Talking to Vas about shit that Red doesn’t even know how to talk about isn’t going to get him any closer to it, so Red’ll stay outside until dinner. 

Only one of the doors to the dormitory still opens. The other one is stuck shut, too many years of disuse combined with the swelling and shrinking of the wood over time. He still has to put his shoulder into it to get it open, and slam it to get it shut again, but it works. And here, in this building at least, he can be as alone as he wants to be. The place has solid bones, but it’s not in great shape. Raven’s parents hadn’t been interested in running a ranch, or living outside of town. They’d let it fall apart. 

For them though, all of them, being just outside of town fits them. Vasquez and Faraday had found an apartment in town, but even they spend a lot of time out here still. Case in point, Vas has found something else in the house to work on, and Faraday is making dinner. That last part Red doesn’t mind. He doesn’t remember liking Faraday all that much last time, no matter what Vas said, but he likes him now. He leaves Red be, and he’s a good cook. Also, he stitches Red up whenever something happens, which means Red doesn’t have to go to the clinic for every little thing, which is Raven’s modus operandi. 

Last time, she’d dragged him up there because she thought he had the flu, bitching him out about how many of their people had died from it. _Their people_. Red’s got no fight with her in particular, doesn’t remember having anything personal with any Navajo, but he wasn’t one of them. 

He huffs out loud. He’s got to stop thinking that way, and he knows it. It’s not worth the anger. Besides, Raven is good to him. Better than she has to be, considering they’d never met before he showed up. He’s not sure how much she knows, about Rose Creek and Denali, but he gets the idea she knows he’s the one that took care of that asshole. Might be she thinks she owes him something. Probably just that she’s a genuinely nice person though. She married Jack. Twice. 

And she does give him free rein to do what he likes. That’s better than Vas. If he gets on Red about his damn ears one more time, Red’s going up a size just to do it. Red gets it, that’s not the problem. 

It’s just sometimes, when Vas gets on his whole ‘second chance’ bullshit, Red kind of wants to hit him. Or something. It’s easy for him to say it. It’s not so easy for Red. 

Nothing ever is, feels like.

But there’s not a lot he can do about it. Except try and work his way through it, and weirdly enough, Josh had good advice for how to help with that too. Which is why he was buying Red spray paint. 

He’s got a room in the main house, but he keeps a bedroll out here, in the only bedroom that’s still got all of its roof. A bedroll, and some other stuff he doesn’t want anyone else going through. Like the spray paint, and the tin he keeps his rolling papers and weed in. 

Raven had told him he was free to do whatever the fuck he wanted in the dormitory. She’s not intending to take on any hands, not with them around, and this building is dead last on the list of shit that needs work. Vasquez has already said it’ll be easier to just tear everything out anyway, strip the building to its skeleton, and start again. So it doesn’t matter what he does to these walls. What he paints on them. No one comes in here but him.

No, in here, it’s just him. Him and everything he’s got to work through. 

He’s not like Goody, not as educated. And he’s not as interested in who Goody calls ‘the masters’. He had his own, the first time. He wants to work from their lessons.

It’s important, to keep their lessons now. Hold them close. They’re not like Goody’s masters. There’s no textbooks, no coffee table books or dissertations, on the masters who had taught Red how to paint, over a hundred years ago. He might be the only one left who even remembers their names. Old men, growing too old to ride anymore, showing Red and the other young men how to make the paints, how to decorate their own bodies, and their horses. 

_“Red is for battle,”_ his own grandfather had told him, crushing pigment in a wooden bowl. He had meant something else too. 

Red Harvest’s name has always been heavy. But he was not the only child then carrying a heavy name. The times had turned against them, and there had been enemies on all sides, pressing in closer every day. The plains were no longer theirs. Nothing was theirs. 

And nothing’s gotten better. Over a century later, and they’ve been reduced to this. Forced to be friends with people he was raised to see as the enemy, bonded by strife in the time he spent being dead. He understands. Or he should. He knows he should. He’s read the history books. He knows what happened. Why everything is this way now. But it’s hard to swallow. 

Hard to be friends, when it had been another tribe that had taken what he held closest to his heart. 

He had been coming home. Sam and Vasquez were both already gone. It had just been the three of them left. Red had kept chasing down bounties, for lack of anything better to do to earn money. Bounties were easy. That last one had not been, the snow already falling, the nights too cold. He had been pushing his horse, eager to be back, to wash away the dirt of the road. To be warm. To lie down, that night, in the bed he shared with Teddy, and rest his head on Teddy’s chest, listen to his heartbeat. 

But there had been only Emma to meet him on the porch, in a dark blue dress, a grey shawl around her. She hadn’t had to tell him. He had looked at her face, and known. 

How is he supposed to forgive that? Move on, and let the past lie, when it still aches? It would be easier, if he knew. If someone had known what tribe they were from. He’s gone over it a thousand times in his head, but it could have been anyone. 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anymore than he did then. What he knew, knew for sure, knew to the very depths of himself, was that he hadn’t been able to protect the one he held close. 

Now, this time, he paints a sun with the red spray paint. A joke, from over a hundred years ago. He can’t even remember the exact words. But he remembers the way Teddy had smiled at him. It had become something private, not good luck, but something for him to carry as a reminder. That he had someone waiting for him. 

He never should have touched him. He had known the risks; there were too many to count, and they all ended with one or both of them dead. 

It was just…he’d already...he’d just thought - 

Angry, at himself, at _everything_ , and nothing, somehow all at once, he throws the paint can down the hall, the clatter echoing even after the damn thing rolls to a stop. He can’t think, even after it stops, can’t work out where his head is at. It’s too much, all of it, everything in his head trying to fight it out, with no winner in sight. 

He needs to settle down. No one needs to deal with him like this. He doesn’t even want to deal with himself like this. 

He kicks the spray paint can when he passes it, and it bounces out of sight, into one of the old dorm rooms, underneath a rusting bunk bed. It was mostly empty anyway. And he’s got more. 

In the room, he opens the wooden window slats to let the light in, but still slanted down enough they’ll keep the rain out when it starts, and sits on the bedroll, rolling a joint. 

Weed is different now, along with pretty much everything else. Back the first time, when he would sit outside with Sam and Vasquez, sometimes Emma, and smoke, all it did was numb the pain in his back, and whatever other old injuries were bothering him. Now, smoking it does more for his head than anything else, putting him in a haze where his anger breaks up into pieces, scattering around his head and leaving a blank space, clear of everything. 

He breathes out smoke, adjusting himself so his back is to the corner. This room is mostly covered already, the walls a kaleidoscope of color, designs layered, one on top of the other. Reds and blues, yellows and greens. All the colors he sees when he closes his eyes tight, and tries not to think. 

Teddy liked blue. In the spring, he’d gather up the blue flowers that had grown along the fenceline, put them in water in the broken jug that sat on the kitchen table. They’d been bright, in the dark kitchen.. After a few days, they’d be wilting over the side, but still blue, against the white jug. The same flowers grow here on the ranch. Red wasn’t good with plants, but he’d know those ones anywhere. Goody had told him what they were, when Red had asked, while they were painting the barn. _Lupine_. 

Once, on a job, when they’d gotten paid with some goods, they’d offered up some bolts of fabric. One had been cotton, dark blue. Red had claimed it for himself, and Emma had made it into a shirt for Teddy. 

That was before. Before Red had said anything to him. He hadn’t known how to say it, had known they were both better off if he said nothing, because he’d seen how Teddy watched him too. He’d known if he said something, anything, that he could have it. 

It was bad enough when white men took up with Native women. Got people shunned, driven out of towns, when someone got it in their head to stir up trouble. Bad enough when there were rumors a man might not want women at all. Teddy had gotten away with a lot. People liked him, and he’d proven himself in that fight. Red had gotten away with a lot in Rose Creek, too. People owed him, and they knew it. 

But Red knew how easy it was for the tide to turn. And taking up with him, that would have very easily turned the tide for Teddy, and him too. Even Sam had tried to warn him, more than once, to not push things. There had been a kind of respectability to them though, in Rose Creek, that they weren’t afforded in other places. They were the heroes, the men who had saved the town. And in that house, there had been the illusion of safety. 

He had wanted to believe in that illusion. He had wanted to believe he could have something, and keep it. A family, a home. Teddy. 

Here, like this, he can think about it at least. The part before it went bad. When it was all of them, together, in that house. He can think about that blue shirt, and the way Teddy had always rolled the sleeves up his forearms. Emma, watching him with that smile whenever he was pretending not to listen. Sam and Vasquez sitting with him on the fence, watching the horses, or on the porch in the dying light, smoking together.

Getting into that bed, at the end of the night, lying there with Teddy while he read, or sometimes, wrote letters meant for no one. He’d told Red it was something that made him feel better, writing to a home he hadn’t seen in over ten years, though there was no one left to send them to, or if there was, Teddy didn’t know how to find them. He hadn’t talked much about it, not really. Red had already known he’d been sent away from his family young. They had been worried about things going on, back where he was from, had sent him away for his own good, he claimed. 

Sometimes, often, Red had hated the men who came west, who took their land, their lives. All of them. But he couldn’t kill them all, and he had learned to live with it. With Teddy though, that had been different. He had been sent west, and while Red Harvest hadn’t spent much time thinking of gods or spirits, he had chosen to believe, at least for a time, that life had sent Teddy west for him. 

That the world had decided to give him some small kindness, to make up for everything else. 

He’s invited Goody up here, a few times, to smoke with him. He didn’t care much about Goody the first time, didn’t really have a chance to get to know him, but this time, they have something in common. That loss, that feeling of unbalance. They don’t talk about it much. They don’t really need to. And Red doesn’t want to anyway. He’s never been allowed to keep much, has had everything taken from him at some point or another. He’d like to keep his memories to himself. 

They’re his, only for him. 

Sometimes, when he lies down like this, after the weed has gone to his head, he can almost hear Teddy’s heartbeat under his ear. Like listening to a seashell, an echo. It had soothed him, then, to rest his head there, and have the proof that Teddy was alive, and with him. That he had that, at least for then. Teddy would place his hand on Red’s back, drag his fingers up and down. He would complain, if Red stayed too long, that Red was too heavy. But he never made him move. 

And then it was gone.

After, Emma Cullen had been as much a ghost as he was, their losses more than either of them could bear by then.

The morning he had ridden out, she had stood there, watching him pack, and asked him if he was coming back. When he had said nothing, she had not asked again. She hadn’t offered him any kind of false comfort either. She wasn’t a liar like that. So many of Matthew’s things were still locked away in that trunk in her bedroom. She still wore that band on her finger, too, all those years later. 

What happened to her, after he was gone, he wonders. Did she grow old? 

He hadn’t. He had fallen in with some other Comanche, men like him, the last of the ones like him, though none of them had known that then. Or maybe they had, and just hadn’t wanted to believe it. 

One last time. One last push back. He had wanted to die at last, and it had felt right, to die for something. To die as a Comanche still. As himself, or whatever was left of him by then. 

It had taken three shots to finally knock him off his horse in the end, and only because they’d gotten her too. She had lost her footing, fell screaming, and he had gone with her, hitting the ground hard, rolling with her. 

The sky overhead had been bright blue, and he had felt something like joy, or relief. That color, like those flowers in the jug, that shirt. 

And then this. This life. Starting over again, with both less than he had then, and more. Less, because he was a child, dreaming of riding a horse that had been nothing but bones for a century, of being tall and strong. A strange child, too serious, that knew things he shouldn’t. That knew things no one knew anymore. _Old soul_ , his father in this life had called him, more than once, usually when the man was too drunk to watch his mouth. Already riding better than the other children, who were years older and taller. Easily winning the games they still played, a century later. 

A strange child, who dreamed of gunshots and blood, of a bow in his hands, who already knew what it was to take a life, who knew what it was to be _free_ , and refused to forget.

His mother and father have always been afraid of him, in both lives. Afraid of the anger that lives in him, of the pride and the fierceness. When he had left this time, it wasn’t much different. No one stopped him. Red Harvest did not belong with them the first time, and he did not this time. He belonged with his brothers, with his sister. 

Maybe some of it was that they were afraid for him, too. He thinks they loved him. Love him. They just never knew what to do with him. He hardly knew what to do with himself, until he found Sam Chisolm. 

This time though, there had been no guns drawn when a truck had pulled up the driveway, headlights falling over Red, sitting on the porch. Sixteen years old in this time, and he’d managed to find Sam Chisolm on his own again. This time, when Sam saw him, he’d gotten out of the truck and embraced him. And this time, he was home. 

It is home, this ranch, here with Sam and Vas, and all the rest. It’s home, the best kind he’ll ever find, in any life, but it still lacks. It lacks Emma. 

And it lacks Teddy. 

He understands Goody. He understands how much it hurts. 

But he understands other things too. He understands that it was his weakness, his love, that got Teddy killed. Teddy should have had a long life, on that farm, in that house with Emma. He should have gotten to be old, to see the children in town grow up. He should have seen more blue summer skies, and filled that broken jar again and again. He should have, but he didn’t, because he let Red love him, and Red’s love was a dangerous thing. 

It’s so easy, for everyone who knows the secret Red is keeping in this life, to tell him to just send a message. He knows where Teddy is, on the Internet at least. To just send a message, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. What can Red even say to him? That he’s sorry his love wasn’t the kind Teddy deserved? That they hadn’t lived in kinder times? 

There’s too much to say, and none of it can make up for it. 

He puts out what’s left of the joint in the dish he’d taken out of the kitchen, leaving it there with all the others, and rolls another. He’s getting hung up on all the bad. That’s not what he wants to think about. Just the good. He wants to think about the good things today. 

Riding, always riding. He can’t remember a time before he knew how to ride a horse. If every other memory of his people is lost, that’s the one he wants to hold onto the most. The feeling of it, the mesh of himself and the horse, until they were one being, running. The creatures that loved their freedom as much as him, the power of it, faster than anyone. 

Horses don’t trust everyone. They’re not like dogs, not in that way. A horse has to believe a rider won’t hurt it, won’t steer them into danger, and a rider has to believe the horse won’t throw them, won’t go wild. There has to be trust, on both sides. Gods were for the dead and the dying. Red Harvest has always been able to believe in a horse though. 

Here, he at least has horses. When he can’t stand the people in town for another second, when he can’t breathe from everything pushing down on him, there are still horses. Horses that turn at his voice, that will carry him, into the dirt and brush, nothing but sky over his head. 

When he had felt her go out from under him, his horse, he knew he’d be dead soon. The blood had been pumping out of him, bullet holes burning in his chest. Too close to the heart, two of them, and the last one to the gut. All deadly. But quick at least. She’d cried beside him, struggling, her coat already thick with her own blood, running through the paint. She had carried him to both their ends, and she was with him, at least. He’d wanted to say something to her, but he couldn’t remember what, even now. There had just been the sky overhead, his own heartbeat pounding in his ears. 

Strange, because he could have sworn his heart had been buried in the ground for two years almost. But maybe, he’d thought, through the haze, he was home, and Teddy was with him. He was home, with his head on Teddy’s chest, the sun coming through the window. 

Death is strange, but it was kind in that moment. 

He coughs, the smoke going down wrong, and grabs the water bottle off the floor by the bedroll, taking a swig and washing it away. They grow this shit too strong now. He should probably get some loose tobacco, roll it together, weaken it. Morbidity doesn’t suit him. Never has. He never thought one way or the other about what happens after death, had mostly figured he’d be dead and that would be it. 

But here he is again. 

Here he is again. 

His phone is right there. He shouldn’t look. But he checks anyway. Teddy hasn’t put up another picture in a couple of weeks, rarely posts at all, but he doesn’t mind scrolling through the old ones, looking at him. Teddy is so young, just like him. They knew each other in their thirties then, both of them. And they’re the same age again, so young. 

There’s a new picture, when he forces it to refresh. Jesus, signal out here sucks. He doesn’t usually care, but it’s still annoying. Teddy isn’t even in the picture anyway. It’s a strip motel, from somewhere. Someone has already commented though, same guy who’s always got something to say. Red’s never going to tell anyone, but he’s checked out the guy’s profile. Because jealousy over something he doesn’t even have is completely healthy. 

_You could have come camping with us if you were going to the middle of nowhere anyway._

Yeah, he bets that’s all this guy was thinking. All Teddy’s replied is, _sorry_ , anyway. 

Fucking - 

This is so stupid. He never feels more like his current age than he does when he’s letting himself do this. This isn’t helping anything, and he knows it. He’s acting like a fucking idiot. Over someone who probably doesn’t want shit to do with him this time. 

He gets a text, from Vas. _Where are you?_

_Dorm_ , he texts back, then sticks his phone under the bedroll. He doesn’t feel like talking to anyone. And it can’t be time for dinner yet, so it’s fine. He won’t sleep out here. He’s a lot of things, but he’s not a masochist, and he’s not sleeping out here in the cold when he’s got a room with heat five minutes away. He needs to come down before he goes in, anyway. 

With that thought, he puts this joint out too, and kills the water. 

He painted a sun on the ceiling, back when he first found this room. It’s not great. The angle had been weird. Still alright. Maybe he should ask Goody to help him out in here. Might be easier if someone else is holding the paint, and Goody won’t ask stupid questions. 

Vasquez, on the other hand...fuck, his phone is buzzing underneath of him. Whatever, he’s in that comfortable spot of being high, and he doesn’t feel like it. Red knows what Vas is trying to do for him, but Red already has three adults on him about shit, he doesn’t need Vas doing it too. Faraday, Josh, is the only one who leaves him alone. 

It’s not even like he hates it, the way they’re trying to look out for him. He wants it, appreciates it. He’s spent a long time in both lives with no one he could trust. He can trust them. They’re his family, in both lives, and they care about him. He cares about them. 

Just, some of this, they can’t help him with. No one can. No one can bring back what’s gone, everything he’s lost. And no one can tell him what to do, or what decision to make. 

The sun over him blurs when he blinks too fast. 

Stupid joke. But after that, he’d always painted a sun on his horse when he rode out. Something to believe in. 

Ignoring his phone apparently didn’t get the message across; he can hear someone walking in the hallway. Probably Sam. He’s the one that usually comes to get Red when he doesn’t answer.

“I like the artwork.” 

It’s not Sam. Red sits up, because he has to. 

“You grew your hair out.”

He’s never hallucinated anything. So this is probably real. 

But it can’t be. Because Teddy is standing in the door. Not as Red knew him, but young. He’s standing there in the door, young, wearing a hoodie and looking at Red. 

“Are you real?” he asks, even though he can’t be.

Teddy bites his bottom lip, and sort of shrugs. “Yeah.” He steps into the room, comes a little more into the light.

That doesn’t make sense. “No. You’re in Colorado.” That’s where Teddy is. In Colorado, with his new family, and his new friends, and that guy always leaving comments. Hundreds of miles away, on the other side of a screen. 

“What?” He’s frowning at Red now. Sometimes he does that in dreams Red has. Frowns at Red. “How do you know that?” He’s standing in the room now, right in front of Red. “Have you known where I was?” 

Red doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what he even can say. 

“You have, haven’t you?” 

That’s a lot of questions. He doesn’t do great with questions when his head is clear, so right now, being interrogated by a ghost, it’s too much for him. If this is a dream, he wants it to change into one of the other ones, one of the good ones. “Be nice to me,” he says, an echo of something he used to say, when he would come home, tired and aching from a job. 

Teddy hasn’t been there for him to say it to in a long time. 

He’s missed him so much. “Just for a little while,” he bargains. “Please.” Can you bargain with a hallucination? 

Maybe, because Teddy sits beside him on the bedroll. “Red,” he says, quietly, reaching up and pushing Red’s hair back some. “This is so stupid. You’re high.” He’s smiling though, and Red leans over, rests his head on Teddy’s shoulder. He smells good, like laundry detergent and cotton. Feels good too, warm and steady. “I like your hair long.” 

“Doesn’t get in the way now,” Red explains. The first time, he’d worn his hair long when he was a child, but had kept it short as an adult. It was cleaner that way, and couldn’t fall into his eyes or get caught on something when he was in a fight. Now, this time, there’s nothing to worry about. Who is he going to fight? So he lets it grow. 

“Come here,” Teddy says, and settles him, so Red’s head is in his lap. “Your timing sucks.” He combs his fingers through Red’s hair though, nails brushing his scalp. 

He’s had this dream before. It’s always a nice dream, but he hates it when it’s over. And he’ll come down soon. He didn’t smoke that much. 

It feels real though. In the dreams, when Teddy’s here, he can’t really feel it when Teddy touches him. It’s just an old memory, playing out. This...this doesn’t feel like a dream. 

“You’re real,” he says. 

“I am,” Teddy says. 

“Okay.” He should move now. Should get up, because he can’t do this. He let himself do this before, let himself have this, and when he did, that was when he condemned Teddy to that death. That stupid death. Shot dead on the front porch by men who didn’t know him, only that he was important to a Comanche. “You died.”

“Presumably, so did you, at some point or another. But here we are. In New Mexico.” 

He did die. Wasn’t he just thinking about that? “They shot me. Soldiers. I fell off my horse. They shot her, too.”

“Elsie?” That’s what Teddy had called her, for whatever reason. “Oh. That’s horrible. She was such a good horse.” 

“She was.” She had been. She’d been such a good horse. “She was so fast.” 

“I know. I remember.” He’s still stroking Red’s hair, and it feels so good. To be touched, like this. Comforted. “Fastest I’d ever seen.” He’s real. He’s here, and he’s real. He’s here, and Red can feel him touching Red. “What were you doing? You were always careful to keep clear of soldiers.”

“Sam and Vas were gone.” His brothers, both dead. “I could live with that. But then you were dead. And it didn’t matter anymore. None of it mattered anymore.” His darkest secret, that if he had been a different kind of man, maybe he wouldn’t have needed the soldiers to do the job for him. His darkest secret, and the hope he’d carried. “I thought if I died, I could find you.” Whatever it was that made them who they were, a soul, or something, he’d thought maybe his could find Teddy’s. “They buried you.” 

“That’s usually how it goes,” Teddy says calmly. “I don’t think this part is how it goes, usually, though. Maybe most people don’t have to remember.” Red doesn’t want to forget. Not this part at least, the way this always felt. When he would come back to that house, and could fall into bed with Teddy, be held. “There’s parts I wouldn’t mind not remembering, not going to lie.” 

The weed and the memories make him ask, “Me?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

“Because I got you killed.” 

He feels Teddy’s fingers stop, just for a second. “Oh. _Oh_. They asked me my name. I’d never met them before. I always wondered why.” He settles his hand on the crown of Red’s head. “Friends of yours?”

“No.” Not his friends. “There were rumors. Emma said.” There were always rumors about the men that saved Rose Creek, the ones who stayed at the Widow Cullen’s house. But these had been specific in the worst kind of way. Rumors that the Comanche warrior who came through town was fond of the other man who lived there. Very fond. “They wanted revenge. Against the Comanche.” And they’d taken it. Put a bullet in his heart, and left him to live with it.

“So they didn’t hurt Emma?” 

Red shakes his head. No, they hadn’t hurt her physically. But they hadn’t left her much better off than Red. She’d loved Teddy. Loved Sam and Vasquez. Red thinks she loved him, too. He’d loved her. But without Teddy, the world had felt too harsh. Too empty. Finally, too empty for him. “She was alive, the last time I saw her.” 

They’re both quiet, for a long time, the haze gradually clearing in Red’s head, reality crashing in. This is real. Teddy is here. He’s here in New Mexico. 

“If you knew where I was, why didn’t you say anything?” 

“You died because of me.” He died because Red had loved him. Because Red hadn’t listened to that voice in his head that told him it was a bad idea, that it was too dangerous. Because Red had loved him too much to tell himself _no_. “What was I supposed to say?”

“‘Hi’ would have been nice,” Teddy replies. “Could have spent more time on my actual schoolwork instead of looking for Sam and Goody.” His voice breaks, and Red sits up. He hated it when Teddy cried. It was rare, which made it worse. “I could have been with you, instead of acting like a damn idiot, moping around after you.” He wipes at his face with his sleeve, sniffs. “I swear, ain’t none of y’all ever so much as said ‘hello’ to the good sense God gave you,” he says, harshly. “I wasn’t _stupid_ , Red. Being with you, that wasn’t my first time around. I knew what could happen. I didn’t care, I loved you.” He lets his hand fall from Red’s hair, to touch his shoulder, his fingers against Red’s neck. “I still love you. That might make me stupid, you asshole.” 

Red never really understood how he did it the first time; there wasn’t a lot left in him by then worth loving. He’s not sure about this time, either. “You don’t know me anymore.” 

Teddy smiles at him, sniffing again. “Well, you’re still the kind of asshole that sits by yourself in a building that’s falling down around our ears to smoke up, and you probably do it because you want to sulk, and because you hate sharing your stash. Not that I blame you, with Sam, Vas, and Goody hanging around. Especially Sam, because if I remember right, he used to get real chatty in a philosophical sort of way when he was high.”

“Yeah. It’s still annoying.” There’s a reason Sam and Goody are friends. “Only now he’s actually taken some philosophy classes. He drops names. I still don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.” Dying thoughts aside, Red still doesn’t have much use for that kind of thing.

As for why this has happened, why they’ve come back, he doesn’t know if that’s the kind of thing anyone can understand. Why they have to _remember_. All the good, and all the bad. 

Sitting here, with one of the only good things that life ever let them have, he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t know how to say any of that. He’s been living around the edges of Teddy’s life for so long, trying to do the right thing this time, maybe, or maybe he’s just been too scared. That if he let himself near Teddy again, the same thing would happen. It could. This time is kinder, to men like them, but not always. 

But Teddy’s here, now. He’s here with Red. 

So he says, “I want you here. I’ve always wanted you here.” Because he does. He’s wanted him back for as long as he could remember. “With me.”

“Then why didn’t you say something?” He shakes his head. “God, you’re an idiot sometimes. If I’d known where you were, Red, I’d of found some way to get to you.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” And Teddy’s not a liar. If he says it, it’s true, and he knows the rest of the sad story now. But he’s still saying it. He’s still saying it. That he still wants Red, in this life. 

Red nods. “Okay.” Because he’s not questioning it. If he can have this back, if he has a chance at it, he’s not turning it away. 

“I can only stay for two weeks, right now,” Teddy tells him. And yeah, Red should have expected that. They’re both still just seventeen this time, and from what Red has seen, Teddy genuinely has a good home life. Parents that love him, and probably won’t be on board with their kid running away to New Mexico to live with a guy that, as far as they know, he just met. “It’s spring break. My moms let me come down to help Billy out, but then I have to go back.” 

He almost says he could go to Colorado, but that won’t work either. He’s almost finished with his home-school program, but he still has vo-tech, and one of his teachers has already promised him a job when he’s done. And Raven will have the baby soon, he’ll need to be here to help. “That’s not a lot of time.” 

“No, but if Billy’s staying here, I think I can spin something,” Teddy says. “Going to need Sam’s help, but maybe I could convince them that working here for a summer would be good for me. Right now, think my moms would say yes to anything if it would get me to cheer up.” 

His eyes are still wet, and Red reaches up, wipes away some of the tears that have streaked down his face. “You’ve been sad?” He’s always smiling, in the pictures he posts. 

“I was always sad when you were gone. And you’ve been gone a long time.” 

Red adjusts them, on the bedroll, encourages Teddy to get his legs over Red’s. He feels better, with the weight on him. “I didn’t do so great without you, either.” He’d been alone, when he didn’t know how to be anymore. “Two weeks?” That’s really not a lot of time, not now that Teddy’s here. He has so much he wants to show him, here on the ranch. The land, the sky. Everything Red’s done in this dorm. “You’ll like it here. We have horses.”

“Yeah?” He finally smiles again, looking towards the window. “Which one’s your favorite?” 

“Paint horse named Eowyn.” He wants to show her to Teddy. Not right now, not when all the horses are anxious. After the storm has passed. 

“Please tell me you did not name her,” Teddy groans, and Red has to admit guilt, and nod. “I can’t believe you sat still long enough to read those books.” He doesn’t stop Red’s hand on his thigh, when Red slides it higher. “You turned into a bookworm?”

“Not a lot to do.” But he does like to read more, in this life, now that he can, and there’s books that interest him. “She killed the Witch King.” 

“I know.” 

Red’s missed him, even the small things, like this, just getting to look at him. “Can I kiss you?” That’s something he didn’t ever have to do, the first time: ask. But he wants to be sure it’s okay. That this means what he thinks it means, Teddy being here, with him. Everything he’s said. 

He’s already come closer, Teddy’s legs against his stomach, his hand on Teddy’s thigh. Close enough he could kiss him now, if he’s allowed. 

“I’d like it if you did.” 

It was like this the first time, too. Just them, alone in that house, the rain so loud and thick it had kept the others in town. Just them, after too long of something sitting between them they both knew about, but couldn’t talk about. Until that night, when Red had said, _“Come here,”_. And Teddy had. 

This is the first time, in this life. He doesn’t remember when the storm finally started, but he can hear the rain on the roof, and outside the window. And it’s just them, in this dorm. 

It feels as good as it did then, when he had spent so long knowing what he wanted, and that it was just within reach. Now, might feel even better, because he’s been waiting even longer. 

“I love you,” he says. He never said it the first time, didn’t think he had to. Didn’t know if he could. But he had felt it, and even with the pain it had brought, he had held it close. But this is a new time, and they’re new too. He wants to say it. 

“You better, because I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do,” Teddy says, almost laughing when Red kisses his jaw, his neck. Trying to commit this to memory, a new memory, Teddy so young. He is too, and he feels like it suddenly, the rush of joy at getting to be close with someone, with Teddy. Getting to kiss him, touch him. “Fuck, how am I going to explain you?” 

“I can look respectable.” Maybe. He could try. “Your moms strict?”

“Jesus, how long have you been stalking me, you weirdo?” He still lets Red bear him down on the bedroll, lie on top of him. “You’re still too heavy.” But just like then, he doesn’t push Red off, instead wrapping his arms around Red’s shoulders. He feels so good, so warm and real. “No, really, how long?” 

“Awhile. It’s just Instagram.” Enough he could see, let himself know Teddy was okay. “Are they?” 

Teddy sighs, his arms loosening as Red sinks down, lets himself do what he needs to. What he’s needed to do for a long time, what he thought he’d never get to do again. He rests his head on Teddy’s chest, so he can hear his heart beating. It’s there, just under his ribs, in Red’s ear. “They’re a little protective. I’m an only child, if you don’t count Billy, which I think they kind of do.” There’s a story Red definitely needs to hear. “And I think they’ve got their own idea of what kind of boy they want to see me with.” 

“Not me?” They still can’t get away from that entirely, can they?

“Probably not.” He has his hand on Red’s back, stroking up and down. “But I guess I’ll figure that out.” Against Red’s back, he feels Teddy flatten his palm. “Doesn’t matter. Billy’s right.”

“About what?”

“Lots of things,” Teddy answers, softly, the rain almost drowning him out. “But mostly you.” He sighs, Red’s head rising with his chest. “I kept telling myself some story, that it was better that way. If you didn’t remember me. But that’s not what I wanted.”

Red lifts his head, braces himself on one arm, hovering over Teddy. “What do you want?” Did he ever ask that, the first time? He doesn’t remember. 

“Same thing I wanted then,” Teddy says, raising his head just enough he can kiss Red again. “I wanted to be with you. No matter what.” He smiles, just a little. “I think maybe we’ll have a chance to get it right this time.”

It reminds Red of something Vas said to him, a couple of months ago, after Red had told Vas the truth. About what had happened to Teddy, what Red knew in this life. That this time, they could have a chance. Grow old. Be happy, or close to it. 

He had promised Vas he’d try for something in this life. At the time, he’d made the promise because that was what Vas had wanted from him, but Red still hadn’t been sure. 

Now, it feels like something has shifted. Like the first time, when he’d thought maybe Teddy had been sent west for him, for both of them. So they could find each other. So they could be happy, for that short amount of time they’d had. Teddy is here again, come all the way out here from somewhere else, to Red. Where he says he wants to be. 

With Red. 

“I can cut my hair,” he offers, now. “Take the gauges out. If that’ll help.” If that’s what it takes to look good enough Teddy’s moms won’t find a problem with him, he’ll do it. Small sacrifices that don’t really mean anything in the long run. 

“No,” Teddy protests, combing his fingers through Red’s hair again. “You’re an idiot, sometimes, I swear. I never tried to change you before, what makes you think I’ll do it now?” And, yeah, back then, the first time, there had been bigger reasons to ask. He never had though. “I’ve always loved you, just how you are, Red.They’ll just have to learn.” 

Red reaches up, touches his face. He’s real. “Okay.” 

Later, after the rain stops, and they go inside the house, after Red sees Billy, and the whole story of how Teddy somehow found Billy gets told, and the house is quiet, everyone settling for the night, Red goes to the kitchen to get a drink. Teddy’s asleep in his bed, and Red feels safe leaving him for a little while. 

The light is on, on the front porch, so Red shrugs on a hoodie and steps out, his feet bare on the cold wood. Sam is sitting in one of the chairs, smoking a cigarette. “Don’t tell Faraday,” he says, when he sees Red. “Think that boy came through on this side with an extra helping of paranoia.”

“He got blown up,” Red reminds him. 

“That he did,” Sam says, humming. “Teddy Q. asleep? Lord knows he’s earned it, putting up with Billy’s moping all by his lonesome. Think I was about to kill Goody myself, I had to look at his face much longer.”

Red smirks, sitting down beside Sam. “I was sick of the poetry.” 

“Don’t be lulling yourself into a false sense of security, thinking that’s going to stop. He ain’t ever going to shut the hell up, now.” 

Yeah, turns out a happy Goody talks a lot. Red hadn’t minded much tonight, but that was probably his own good mood. It’ll get annoying soon. Whatever. 

“What about you?” Red turns his head to look at Sam again. “You going to turn into a regular Shakespeare, now?”

“Hate that guy,” Red mutters. He’s had to read way too many of those damn plays in this life. 

“‘Course you do.” He laughs at Red, but Red doesn’t care. It’s never condescending when Sam does it. More like he’s just kind of interested in the way Red’s mind works. “Why didn’t you ask me to look for him? Teddy Q.? I kind of wondered about that, considering how you were about him.”

Red shrugs. “Did it on my own.” He doesn’t explain, and Sam doesn’t ask. It’s not like it matters anymore. 

“Well, guess all we need to do now is be patient, and wait for Emma to find her way to us.” 

And she will. Red feels sure of it right now, for some reason. Maybe because she’d found them the last time. Or, like the rest of them, she’d found Sam. They all always find their way to Sam, somehow or another. 

Sometimes, like now, he wants to ask Sam what he thinks this all means. Why they remember, why they’ve come around again. If anyone would have an answer, it’s Sam. But at the same time, Red doesn’t really care anymore. It’s not a question that needs answering, when it’s all said and done. 

“I’m going in. Don’t freeze, old man,” he says to Sam, standing up. 

“I’m younger than you were when we met the first time, you little son-of-a-bitch,” Sam curses at him, huffing. “I swear, I liked you better when you didn’t know English.” 

“You’re lucky I was fucking with you, your Comanche was shitty.” 

“I swear to God, I’m surrounded by fucking ingrates -”

Red doesn’t hear anymore, the door shutting behind him. 

Back in his room, Teddy’s still there, mostly asleep when Red slides back into bed. He shifts a little when Red wraps an arm around him, but doesn’t wake up completely. 

Some questions are bigger than them, he thinks, and that’s never been his thing anyway. It doesn’t matter. He’s home, with his family, and Teddy is here, heart beating steady. He can sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to get this up on Valentine's Day, but it's 2:30am on the 15th here on the East Coast, so I think I'm only squeaking by in a different time zone. I mostly wrote this with "Crystal" by Stevie Nicks on, because the second half's instrumentals seem to fit the mood.


	7. Jack

It’s fair to say that Jack’s struggled with the technology of this new era; but he hadn’t really understood technology the first time around either. Jack’s expertise had started and ended with a gun. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it, didn’t then either. Just seems to be something about him, that he can’t get the hang of it.

He wasn’t that great with people either, truth be told. Oh, he knew his manners, said his _’yes, ma’am’_ and his _‘no ma’am’_ like a man should. Tipped his hat to ladies, and didn’t bother them. Women hadn’t liked him too much, the first time. He’d been a big man, for the time. His mama hadn’t been able to explain it; both her and his daddy had been on the smaller side. But there was always work for a boy his size. They’d never gotten through a week without one of their neighbors asking if they could borrow him for something or other. 

Women hadn’t had much use for him, overall, though. He was too big, not much to look at, and even as a boy, he knows he’d been a little odd. No respectable girl wanted a boy like him to come calling, and no woman wanted a man like him for a husband. 

So that had been that, and Jack had been alright with it. He liked women, but if they didn’t like him, he wasn’t going to force his company on them. Wasn’t how he was raised. He’d stuck to what he was good at, and made a living from it. Trapping and hunting, guiding the rich men that came from back east and up north on jaguar hunts down south, and guiding the rich men from California and Mexico on bear hunts up north. Guarding settlers through Indian land, even falling in with some Indians when they paid him to ride with them instead. 

Riding, hunting, shooting. That’s what Jack was good for. 

It had been here, in New Mexico the first time, before it was New Mexico, that he’d fallen in with some of those Indians, Navajo, to be exact. They called themselves _Dine_ , or something like that, amongst themselves, but truth be told, Jack never had much of a head for languages, and when they’d tried to teach him some, it mostly ended up with them laughing at him. Jack hadn’t minded. By then, he was used to people laughing at him, and none of them had meant any harm. 

They’d let him stay with their village, in any case. That was how Jack knew they didn’t mean any harm by laughing. They still liked him just fine, trusted him. 

And he’d met Raven there. Tall woman, taller than the rest standing around, her long black hair hanging over her shoulder in a braid, watching him. Smiling, that way she did when she had a secret. He hadn’t known what that smile meant then. Just knew she was pretty, and looking at him. 

Knew she was pretty, and learned she was funny, in her way. Funny, and clever. And she’d liked him, thought he was funny, too, even when he wasn’t intending to be. He hadn’t even known what to say to her, half the time, back then. Hadn’t mattered, really. He’d just liked listening to her talk to him. Being with her, he’d felt like he fit in somewhere for the first time, even if it was only by her side. And she’d been happy with that, been happy to have him as her husband. Have their son, eventually. 

Everything that had come to pass after that, Jack doesn’t much like thinking about. Her death, and the death of their son, Creek, that had been more than enough to break the strongest of men. Jack was a big man, in every life, but he had not been the strongest, not where it counted. 

That life ended with something close to redemption, at least. As close as he could come to it. 

Jack doesn’t like to think on all that, and he doesn’t see why he should. The world came around again, and so did he, and so did Raven. And so did Creek. Well, he thinks so. No telling until the baby is born, but he doesn’t see why the baby being a girl or a boy matters all that much. The world’s changed, and so has Jack. Or, well, he’s come around to other ways of seeing things. Maybe Creek would have grown older in that life, and started thinking he was a girl. Or maybe this baby will grow up and decide they’re a boy after all. 

He’s sort of hoping for that. Not just so he can see his son again, no, not just for that. Jack doesn’t really know what a person’s supposed to do with a daughter. He supposes he can take her hunting, if she likes that kind of thing. Maybe she’ll like art too. Jack’s not one for technology, but welding, that he can do, it turns out. Helpful skill to have, around these parts, earns him good money outside the ranch, and on the ranch, well. Turns out art is something else he has a good hand for. 

That had been Sam’s idea. He’d thought it’s do Jack some good, making things. 

But all of that, everything in the past, and this life, that still don’t give Jack any sort of mind for computers. 

Makes him feel a bit better that Sam don’t seem to be doing all that much better. They’re both in the kitchen, laptop open in front of them, trying to work out just what it is they’re supposed to be doing.

“What the fuck, you two were both in the damn Army,” Faraday grouses, getting it set up for them. “Look, alright? You just click the icon for Skype, bring it up, and wait for them to call. Then you answer. This is not hard.” 

“Don’t we need a camera or a microphone, or something?” Sam asks. 

Faraday points at the laptop. “They come with ‘em built-in, you fucking Luddites. Jesus fucking wept, why isn’t Raven doing this?”

“She’s feeling a bit under the weather,” Jack says. Baby ain’t due until October, but Raven hadn’t had an easy time of it the first time around. She says different, but Jack thinks he remembers better on that front. Nothing to worry about anyway, Creek was just real active the first time, and while Raven’s a tall woman, she always had trouble carrying extra weight. She blames Jack for that, but he can’t argue much. Creek had been a big baby, right from the start. “Do you think you could…”

He don’t much like treating Faraday like a midwife, but Jack doesn’t know all that much about childbirth. He’s tried, and it’s a little easier in this life. They write books now. But Faraday knows what he’s doing, and Jack doesn’t, books be damned. 

“Anything to talk to someone sane,” Faraday agrees readily, getting up from the table. “And speaking of, could you two pretend you’re something close to normal for this? Red finally stopped fucking sulking, alright, don’t be scaring off Teddy Q’s mommies. Probably have to tie him to a stake in the yard, keep him from running off to Colorado…” He disappears down the hall, off to Raven. She’s been lying down on the back porch. Claims the floor is more comfortable. 

Sam checks, and when they’re both sure Faraday is gone, he pulls a vape out of his pocket. He takes a hit off it, then passes it up to Jack. It ain’t nothing like a cigarette, and it’s good enough, and about all they can get away with. Raven can’t stand the smell of cigarettes right now, and Faraday’s like her own personal damn bloodhound. Whatever Sam’s got in this thing just smells like sugar, and it soothes the itch.

They both jump when the laptop starts making noise. “Is that it ringing?” Sam asks. 

The little icon on the Skype window is doing something, so Jack guesses so. He leans over and clicks it, and just like that, they’re looking at two women on the other side of the screen. Neither of them look particularly happy. 

“We want to see Billy,” the Asian woman says, right off the bat. 

“Wendy,” the other woman hisses. “Woman, I told you not to do that. We talked about this.” 

“‘Woman’ me again, see what happens,” the first one warns. If Jack doesn’t know much about women, he sure doesn’t know anything about lesbians, but he does know a shut-down from a wife when he sees one, and that was definitely what that was. Her wife seems to know it, too, because she stays quiet while the Asian one turns back to the camera, and says, “I want to see Billy. Now. We’ve fed and housed that boy for god knows how many years, I want to see him.” 

The other woman does something they can’t see, quieting the first one. “Let’s start over. I’m Ruth Gretz-Chen, and this is my wife, Dr. Wendy Gretz-Chen.” She smiles, or something like it. “Theo has told us both a lot about you, and your ranch. He said Billy was settling in really well, which we’re very happy about.”

“Yeah, Billy’s fitting in real well,” Sam says. It’s true. And the help has been nice; Billy had done plenty of work on farms and ranches the last time around, and he knows what he’s doing here. They don’t have much; the horses and the goats, plus the henhouse. It’s still a help though, and Billy’s seemed happy with it. “We’re happy to have him.” 

“We would like to see him,” Ruth says. 

“Now,” Wendy insists.

Sam looks up at Jack, and makes a gesture Jack takes to mean to get on with the order, so he heads over to the kitchen door, and leans out, where Billy and Red Harvest are sitting. 

“Billy, Teddy’s mothers would like to talk to you. One is real set on it.” 

He looks over his shoulder at Jack. “Is it the Chinese one?” Jack nods. “Yeah.” He turns to Red Harvest. “Good luck with that one.” Red Harvest just shrugs, but Billy gets up and comes on in. 

Inside, he pushes Sam out of the way, and leans over the laptop. “Wendy, Ruth. I’m alive. I’m not being held hostage. This is not a cult compound.” One of them starts to say something, but Billy cuts her off. “No one is making me say anything. Has anyone ever been able to make me say anything?” 

“I sure can’t,” Sam says. 

The other woman, Ruth, asks, “Are you getting enough to eat? What about that laptop we sent with you, is it working okay? It was only two years old, but -”

Billy just sits down, and starts talking to them, and Sam comes up to stand by Jack.

“Surprised they didn’t adopt him, too,” Sam says. 

“You don’t always need a piece of paper to show you love someone,” Jack replies. “Wasn’t easy for me and Raven to get married the first time, you know. Her people married us, but we had to go through a few preachers before we found one who would marry us in the church. We were still plenty married ‘fore that.” And maybe Jack had had to persuade that last one to their line of thinking, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s perfectly legal, this time around, and they’d had no trouble. 

The two women seem to be calming down now, in any case. Jack can’t blame them. Teddy Q. had gone home, about a week back, but over the course of time he was here, Jack had seen how close him and Billy had gotten in this life. Makes sense they’d be worried about Billy just packing off and running to another state. He’s awful young, this time around, at least for this era. 

Jack thinks he must have been about sixteen, maybe, when he left home back the first time. And it hadn’t been anything to fuss over back then, for all it was more dangerous out in the world. He’d been bigger than most other men by the time he was twelve, and by sixteen, he’d had a full beard. That was usually enough to consider a boy to be grown, back then. 

People think differently about that kind of thing now. Eighteen Billy might be, but he ain’t quite considered grown to most folks. Jack don’t really see the sense in it, but maybe he would think differently too, if he hadn’t already known Billy as a man. 

Still, Billy is eighteen, and he can do as he likes, which includes living out here with them, on the ranch. Teddy Q., on the other hand, apparently ain’t going to be eighteen for awhile. In any other case, Jack wouldn’t think much on it. He’s fond of the boy, was plenty fond of him back that first time, but a few months wait didn’t mean much to him. 

No, it’s Red Harvest Jack is worried about. He’s spent a long time with them by now, well over a year, hiding something, something that was causing him no small amount of pain. Finding out what it was, a love lost, that’s something Jack can understand. He knows that pain, knows it deeply. He’s been happy, ever since Billy showed up with Teddy Q. in tow. It doesn’t seem fair to Jack, to keep them apart again. If Teddy Q.’s mamas’ aren’t alright with him visiting down here, Jack doesn’t see that doing anything good for Red Harvest. 

No, there ain’t nothing good about that kind of separation. About any kind.

Raven had been pregnant when she was killed. Finding her, laid out in the front yard, left like she was nothing, that had broken Jack into more pieces than he could ever put back together. There had been no mercy shown to her, none at all. He hadn’t understood how anyone could do such a thing to a woman, much less a pregnant one. But there she’d been, lying in her own blood, and worse. 

Happened in death sometimes, that the body went into labor. That, that had been worse. He’d prayed to his god and hers that she hadn’t known, that she’d already been gone, and he’d prayed that the baby, small as it was then, hadn’t known any pain. He’d been praying and praying that day, kneeling there, in the dirt and the gore, when he’d realized. Realized Creek hadn’t come running out when he’d heard Jack’s horse. 

He’d found their son lying in the barn. He’d only been ten, but already taller than all the other boys his age. Ten, with his hair long, so dark brown it was almost as black as Raven’s. Big eyes, some color caught between green and brown, depending on the day, a few little freckles across his cheeks still. He’d been more like Jack than Raven, quiet, maybe not as smart as some, but good with his hands. Always climbing up something, long, gangly limbs made for it. Their son, their child. 

There’d been so much blood on the barn floor, soaked into the straw and the dirt. Their son, their boy. The baby Jack had held from his first breath, that had pulled on Jack’s beard so hard even Raven couldn’t get him to let go, when he was in a mood to only be with Jack. Creek, their child. Jack’s child. And he’d been all by his lonesome in that barn when they slit his belly open, left him to die all by himself in there. Had he been calling for Jack? Calling for his daddy to come save him?

The agony of it, of them being dead and gone, of Jack failing to do the things he’d sworn before his own god and Raven’s, to protect his wife, and their children, it had been too much. Too much for one man to bear. 

There was no way of knowing which Crow had done it. He’d just known they were Crow. And Jack hadn’t cared. They could all pay for it, in his broken and grieving mind. They all could. 

He can’t take back what he did, same way he couldn’t take back their deaths. He couldn’t then, and he can’t now. 

All he can do this time is try again, and hope God feels the books are somewhat balanced. And if they’re not, maybe Raven’s gods will be more merciful. He doesn’t mind so much anymore, not now, where he goes when he dies, as long as this time, he can stay with Raven and their children. He can’t stand to be parted from her again. 

That kind of separation, that’ll break a man’s very soul.

Part of balancing those books, but mostly just him doing what he thinks is right, is taking care in the world this time. Being kind. Building something worthwhile, instead of spilling blood. He’s not a smart man, never has been, but he can build things. He’d come with Raven here, after he’d left the Army with Sam, helped her re-build this ranch from a ruin to what it is now. Brought the rest of his family out here to live, so they could be somewhere safe. Just Sam at first. But Sam had needed this place about as much as Jack did. Had needed a home, had needed to build something. 

And then Sam had tracked down Joshua Faraday, of all people, in a hospital all the way out in Louisiana. Faraday found Vasquez out there too. And the pair of them had found Goody. 

Red Harvest had found them, though. Found Sam, and the ranch. 

Jack hadn’t recognized him at first, he was so young. Had taken him for one of Raven’s little cousins, come out to the land for some chore or something. It wasn’t until Sam had embraced him that Jack had realized who he must be. Boy he’d hardly known, that first time, before Jack had died. Hadn’t known if he could trust him either. Jack hadn’t been able to recall if he’d had any dealings with any Comanche, but if he had, they’d likely not been good, and Jack’s reputation had followed him for years, even after he’d retreated into the safety and quiet of the hills. 

When Jack had met him though, a foolish old part of his brain had done the math, and realized Creek would have been about Red Harvest’s age by then. Likely would have been as tall as him, might have looked something like him, too. Raven’s kin hadn’t seemed to care much for beards, so Creek might not have either. Might have decided to wear his hair short like Red Harvest’s. Maybe even would have gotten himself tattooed, like the one Red Harvest had worn on his arm back then. 

It had been painful, but the kind Jack couldn’t leave alone. By then, he thinks he’d gone more than a little crazy. Knows it really, because back then, part of him had wondered if Red Harvest was even real, or just a ghost. Come to either comfort him, or torment him, in his last days. 

He’d been alone for quite awhile, by then. Body couldn’t blame him for being a bit touched by it.

Red Harvest is very much a real young man, in any case. Very much real, and his friend. Sam had told him what Red Harvest had done, in that fight. That he’d killed Denali, and none-too-kindly either. Stopped him from killing Ms. Emma Cullen, made sure he couldn’t hurt no one else in that life. 

So it had only felt right that Jack opened their home to him, gave him sanctuary. He seemed to understand this new world about as well as Jack did, in any case, so they had that in common too. Jack’s done his best by him, and thinks he’s done alright. Red Harvest don’t ask for much, anyway. Mostly, he just likes to be left alone. 

There’d been that something tearing the boy up though, right from the start. Raven had thought it must be waking up in this time, and realizing the pain his people had endured while he was gone. That had been hard on her, too. And Jack didn’t doubt that was some of it. But deep down, he’d suspected there was something more. There was just something familiar about the way Red Harvest seemed to be hurting. 

It’s a very recognizable kind of hurt, when a person’s going through the same kind you’ve already lived through. 

Sam’s talking to Teddy Q.’s mamas now. Explaining how the ranch works, who they all are, spinning some story about how it all came to pass. Jack don’t have much to contribute, so he steps outside, sits down by Red Harvest. He still has Sam’s vape, and he takes a hit off it now. Tobacco that tastes like sugar; there’s something he never would have seen coming. 

“You ain’t careful, son, that phone is going to grow into your hand,” he says. 

“You’re not even that old, quit sounding like someone’s grandfather,” Red Harvest snipes back, dry as a bone. 

That’s true. Jack isn’t even thirty yet in this life. “Still older than you.” And still his legal guardian, until Red Harvest finally hits eighteen. “Teddy Q. talking to you, then?” The boy had hardly been gone before that started up. Not that Jack would hold that against them. They’ve been separated for too long. Red Harvest longer so, and for worse reasons than this. Makes sense to Jack that he’d want to keep eyes on him. 

When he’d found Raven again, Jack hadn’t been able to say a word. She’d been working in a bar just off the base, and when Jack had seen her the first time, he’d turned on his heel and walked right back out. Done it more than once, the courage he needed refusing to show itself, for all Sam had been pushing him to do something about it. He’d been just as worthless in this time as he was that first time, just a low-ranking soldier, not much chance of rising higher before his time was up, still living in the barracks. He’d only had one friend to his name, and that was Sam, so that hardly counted. 

Besides, he didn’t think Raven would want much from him. He’d failed her as a husband, as the father of her children. 

But he’d only ever loved one woman in the whole of his life that first time, and he didn’t see this one going any differently, not when he knew she was out there. So he’d kept going back, hiding up in a corner, making a fool of himself to the locals, he was sure. Dumb young soldier, staring at the bartender. Sam had sure as hell thought he was foolish. 

Up until that fifth time, when he’d walked out again, only for her to come shouting after him, cussing up a storm about how she was going to wring his neck for making her run outside with her inside-shoes on still, when there was snow on the ground. He hadn’t been sure just what she was going to do to him. All he could do was take his coat off, put it around her shoulders. It had been cold out, and all she had on was a tee shirt. 

What she’d done was wrap her arms around his neck, her face against his shoulder. They’d been about the same ages they’d been that first time, when she’d finally had enough of waiting around on him, and kissed him herself, so it had felt, well. It had felt like something he’d believed he’d never have again, living or dead, having her in his arms, still cussing at him for making her chase him. 

Telling him about Sam, coming up in the bar a week past, and telling her everything. Sam never could just mind his own business, not when he knew better. 

Once he’d held her again that night, there was no letting her go. Lord knows, she wouldn’t have let him. No, Raven knew what she wanted, in both times. And God knew why, but she wanted Jack. Her father, Abraham, had even pulled him aside, after they’d gone to her family’s house, intent on marrying. Told Jack he wouldn’t be angry, or nothing, just wanted to know if Raven was in a family way, seeing as how they barely knew one another, to those on the outside.

He didn’t know if Abraham believed him back then when Jack had assured him she wasn’t, but he’d respected his daughter enough to just go along with her wishes. Signed the land over to her, too, when she’d asked for it. Hadn’t even seemed all that thrown off when she’d told them that she and Jack were taking in Red Harvest, despite their own misgivings about him. 

“His moms don’t know about me,” Red Harvest says to Jack, now. 

Jack thinks this is the part where he’s supposed to say something about not being ashamed of yourself, or your relationships. “That might be for the best.” He’s never been a very good liar. Didn’t have the imagination for it. “Seeing as how, as far as they know, you two just met.” Raven’s family had made their peace with it, but they’d both been adults. There’s a difference, there. 

“I don’t exactly come off too great, anyway,” Red Harvest replies. 

That’s a step too far. “What’s wrong with you?” He’s a little rough around the edges in some ways, but Red Harvest is a good man. “You’re doing well in your vo-tech program, got a job waiting for you. That’s better than most young men your age.” Better than some men ten years his senior. Turned out Red Harvest had a good head for mechanics and programming. That’s a good skill to learn early, in this time. “And you’ll have gotten your schooling done earlier than anyone else your age, around here.”

“Yeah, except I’m in that stuff because I had to be pulled out of regular school.” 

“That wasn’t your fault.” And Jack honestly hadn’t been too on board with that plan from the beginning. He’d only gotten through high school because he was from a small town, and there hadn’t been much to deal with. It didn’t seem fair to him to force someone like Red Harvest into regular school, expect him to deal with all that nonsense on top of everything else. He wasn’t suited for it. 

“The fights were kind of my fault.” 

He _really_ hadn’t been well suited for it. In the end, half of why Raven had agreed to the home schooling program because the school had come down to making ultimatums. “All of that will be counted as a juvenile. They seal those kinds of things. Think you have to be a lawyer, or something, to get into them.” And even then, he thinks a person needs a judge’s approval. 

“One of them is a lawyer.” Oh, _Hell_. 

“Lord, boy, wasn’t bad enough you two being how you were the first time, was it?” 

Goody and Billy would have been able to carry it off; even Jack had needed a minute to work them out, and that was only because they’d allowed their little band to see the two of them in a more genuine light. Wasn’t no big thing for a white man to be travelling with an Oriental servant either, though that wasn’t the right word anymore. There had been plenty of men and women like Billy, who’d hired themselves out as everything from bodyguards to nannies. And they’d had Goodnight’s reputation to hide behind. Likely no one had ever looked twice at them.

Red Harvest was a Comanche though, and they weren’t even well liked amongst other Indians, in Jack’s experience, much less white people. There was little chance of him getting on in any town without someone to vouch for him, and even then, Jack doesn’t see it going all that well. Taking up with a white man, well. Jack and Raven hadn’t lived in town for some damn good reasons, and they were a man and a woman, legally married and everything.

Times are kinder though, in some ways. Goody and Billy could do as they liked, and so could Vasquez and Faraday, strange as they were. And Jack can be by Raven’s side. She can be his wife anywhere, no threatening a preacher with a shotgun needed. 

But the world just seems bound and determined to test Red Harvest’s limits. “Maybe it’s best you two keep it under wraps until after you’re eighteen,” he says. He’ll have to look into how New Mexico handles that kind of thing, but he seems to remember being told something about everything being sealed after it was all handled. “They were just schoolyard fights anyway, and you had your reasons.” 

Jack just didn’t see anything wrong with a body defending themselves. Far as he was concerned, the other boys had started it when they’d decided to get in Red Harvest’s face about how he was, and they’d gotten what was coming to them. 

“What if they don’t let him come?” 

“You’ve got a license,” Jack says. “Colorado ain’t all that far. Could take one of the trucks up, spend some time with him when you can, until he’s eighteen.” Lord knows, they’ve got more than enough vehicles laying around the place, even if some of them don’t work. Raven’s father, Abraham, had explained that his own mother had been something of a hoarder when it came to useful things, or things that might be useful, and would hit up estate sales, police auctions, things like that. It’s come in handy for them. Jack doesn’t think he’s ever seen so many power saws. There’s even two shipping containers out in the back field.

Red Harvest doesn’t look all that reassured. “They’re his moms. He loves them.” 

“Loves you too.” God knows he must. Jack just doesn’t see why else Teddy Q. would have risked everything, including his own life, to be with Red Harvest if he didn’t love him. “If my parents had known I’d married a Navajo woman, I don’t think they’d have ever spoken to me again, that first time. They’re not too happy about it this time.” 

They’ve never even met Raven, in that life or this one. He’d called them up, after Raven had chased him down and put him right. Told them. He’d already known they wouldn’t like it, but he wasn’t ashamed of Raven, and he wasn’t going to listen to any of their ignorance. That had really been the last conversation they’d had, in this life. 

Jack can live with that. It’s Raven he can’t do without, not in any lifetime. He proved that plenty. 

“They’re interracial,” Red Harvest says, meaning Teddy Q.’s mamas. “But you know it’s different. With me. For Natives.” He shrugs. “They might just see me the same way everyone else does.”

That he does know. It’s a sad fact of the world, but Jack does know it. It makes him scared for Raven, makes him even more scared for their child. The things they’re going to face in this world, the things Jack still won’t be able to protect them from. “I do. Know that.”

Red Harvest holds out his hand, and Jack passes the vape over, even though he knows Raven will tear a strip off of him if she finds out. “You think I should cut my hair?” 

“Do you want to?” Ain’t Jack’s place to decide that one way or the other, but he does think Red Harvest has real nice hair, all grown out the way it is. And a lot of the boys around here wear their hair long, anyway, so it ain’t like he sticks out. “Could take you into the barber, if you’re looking to. And it’ll grow back if you change your mind.” 

“I want them to be okay with me.” 

Oh, that’s what that’s about. “Better leave it, then. It ain’t going to do you no good, trying to change yourself to look the part. Eventually, they’re going to have to know you for who you really are. Best to get it over with.” 

“That what you did? With Raven’s parents?”

Jack nods. “I ain’t no good at pretending. Never have been. And Raven, bless her soul, loves me just the way I am.” And Jack loves her, just the way she is. “Look, son, I can’t tell you why all this has come to pass. God works in mysterious ways, and all that. All I know, is that losing Raven, and Creek? That was the worst thing that could have happened in my life. Dying was better. I wasted enough time in this life getting in my own damn way, and I ain’t looking to waste any more. Neither should the pair of you.” 

After a second, Red Harvest asks, “Your son’s name was ‘Creek’?” 

“Raven said it made sense in her people’s language. Was a bit longer in hers too. Hell, she could have called him just about anything, and I would have gone along with it, I was so damn happy when he was born.” He never talks about Creek much. Sometimes with Raven, but her grief is just as strong as his is, and it hurts them both. Sometimes he’s talked about him with Sam, when Sam’s talked about his sister and his mother, from that first time. “He was christened as Christopher Creek Horne. But we always called him Creek.” Even now, all these years and a lifetime later, Jack can still feel his throat tighten up just saying his name. 

Red Harvest is a lot of things, but he ain’t cruel. He don’t ask any more about Creek.

Instead, he sits quietly for a little bit, Jack sitting with him, listening to Sam talk to Teddy’s mamas through the screen door. His phone lights up in his hand, and he looks down at it. Whatever it says, he smiles, texts something back. 

“He’s a good boy, Teddy Q.” That makes some kind of sense to Jack. He didn’t get to talking to him much, that first time, had too much else to get done, but at some point, he remembers Teddy Q. telling Jack he’d come from Quakers. Those are fine folks, in Jack’s experience. Teddy Q.’s got something inherently kind in him, too, overall. “Was something, to find out he’s been taking care of Billy this whole time.” Did Jack’s heart good, honestly. He’d been worried about Billy, out there all by his lonesome. 

But Red Harvest don’t look quite as pleased about that. Takes Jack a moment, but while he ain’t a smart man, no, he understands Red Harvest better than some by now. 

“Don’t be telling me you’re jealous,” Jack says to him. Lord Almighty, Red Harvest might be a man grown, in most ways, but he’s still a seventeen-year-old boy in others. “And if you are, I suggest you keep it to yourself.” 

“I’m not,” Red Harvest snaps, looking at his phone. “They’re not like that.”

No, they’re not. Jack had seen that while they were here. There’s a connection between them now, though, a closeness brought about by their circumstances. Billy’s obviously fond of Teddy Q., in that way of his, protective almost. Stuck by his side when Teddy Q. was here, if Goody was busy, and wouldn’t let him go into town on his own. “Way Vasquez and Sam tell it, they’re awfully fond of him, too. And when Ms. Emma Cullen shows up, you’re going to have to share him with her as well. You can’t be his whole world. Ain’t healthy.” 

“That’s not…” Red Harvest sets his phone down on the porch, leans over. “That’s not it.” They’re both quiet for a time, Jack waiting him out. Him and Raven disagree on this method of child-rearing, as much as they can be parents to Red Harvest. She doesn’t like the idea of him stewing in his own thoughts too long, says it’s not good for him. Jack takes a more individual approach, though. Red Harvest will talk when he feels comfortable doing it, and if he needs to be prodded along a little, that’s fine, but Jack can’t see the point of pushing. Best to wait. He’s good at waiting. “His moms already love Billy. Thought they were together.”

Still this subject, then. That makes sense. “They’ll learn to love you, too.” He wonders about something, and decides to risk asking. “You heard anything from the reservation?” He doesn’t mean the one down the way, where some of Raven’s kin live. He means the one Red Harvest is from, this time around. 

He shakes his head. “Last time was Christmas.” It’s April now, almost May.

That’s something Jack just can’t wrap his head around. Even if this baby ain’t Creek, is someone brand new, he can’t see how he won’t love them just as much. He’ll still be their daddy, and they’ll still be his child. 

Well, if they don’t want Red Harvest, that’s on them. Jack wants him, and so do Sam and Raven. He’s got family, regardless. 

He reaches out now, and it says something about the state of mind Red Harvest is in, that he lets Jack do it, lets him wrap an arm around Red Harvest and pull him closer. “You’re a good man, Red Harvest. And you love their boy. That’s good enough. It’ll all work out. Hell, Raven’s daddy likes me this time around.” He hadn’t much the first time, not that Jack blamed him. 

No, Abraham, Raven’s daddy this time around, thinks they’re both pretty strange, choosing to live the way they do, and married so suddenly like they were, but he’s alright with all of it. Leaves them be. If his daughter is happy, he’s happy.

“We could invite them down, even,” Jack suggests. “That’s what people do, these days, and we’ve got the room.” Well, sort of. They’ve gotten a couple of bedrooms back up to snuff, but they’d mostly been focused on the communal areas of the house, and the main structure. There’s the bedroom Vasquez and Faraday were sleeping in, before they moved into town. That would do, wouldn’t it? He’ll have to ask Raven. 

“Maybe,” Red Harvest says, still under Jack’s arm. 

The screen door opens, and Billy comes back out, a cigarette already in his mouth. 

“Don’t even think about lighting that,” Jack warns him. Faraday is still here, and Lord knows, Raven will be able to smell it when she gets back up. “You go on out to the road, you want to smoke.” 

“I’m going, I’m going,” Billy says, walking past them. He hitches his chin at Red Harvest, and Red Harvest stands, following after him. 

Red Harvest is settled for now, as settled as he’ll get until things are calmed down somewhat, so Jack lets them go off together. He’s not alone for long, in any case, Sam coming out to join him now, and take his vape back. After Sam’s had a couple of hits off it, clouds all around them, he says, “Lord, I don’t know how we’re going to get through this.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Those women ran background checks on us,” Sam says, sounding like the thought tickles him. “And I mean the thorough kind.” 

Jack can’t think of anything that might raise a red flag with any of them. “We’ve got an officer of the law living here, half the time.” And Faraday’s a nurse, he’s got a code of conduct he’s got to stick to. 

“Yeah, they know,” Sam says dryly. “I think they know more about me than I do.” He looks at Jack. “I forgot your name is really James.” Hell, Jack don’t even remember that half the time. “Is your middle name really _Zerachiel_?” 

Jack don’t usually put that down on nothing, so it’s a bit odd to hear it. “Yeah, but I don’t use it. Can’t even remember how to spell it.” As far as he knew, his name had only been ‘Jack’ the first time, and his father had been called that too. It might have been ‘James’ when he was christened, but he doesn’t know. He doubts he’d had a middle name. But his parents had gone a bit more formal this time. “You got one? A middle name?” 

Sam shakes his head. “That’s a ‘white people’ thing.” 

That don’t sound right to Jack. “Then why’s Vasquez got all those names on his paperwork?” 

“‘Cause he’s Mexican, don’t be asking me to explain how they do things.” 

Still don’t sound right to Jack. But he doesn’t have the knowledge to contradict, so he leaves it be. “They find out anything they don’t like?”

“Nope,” Sam says casually. “There’s nothing to find. We’re all respectable citizens...just a bit odd. Well, except Raven. How does your wife still have a driver’s license?” 

“I honestly don’t know.” There’s a reason he doesn’t let her drive if he’s in the car. Raven’s of the mindset that speed limits are just a suggestion. “So, no red flags. They give their blessing for Teddy Q. to come on down for the summer?” 

“No, but they’re leaning towards it. Get the feeling he hasn’t been doing too well, past couple of years. Not that I blame him, looking after Billy the way he has. That’s a job and a half.” Gives Jack a bit of a chuckle, he has to admit. Teddy’s a good boy, but he’s a mild-mannered soul. Keeping Billy in line had to be a bit more than he was looking to sign up for. “They’re his parents. They just want what’s best for him. And coming down here for a bit, that might be what’s best for him.” 

Jack can still see Red Harvest and Billy, a bit further down the road. They’re checking on the goats, looks like, though they don’t much need it. All they have are nannies and a few kids in that pen, and they were milked this morning. The two billy goats are off in another pasture where they belong, and goats don’t really need much minding. But it don’t hurt to check. And it does Jack some good, to see Red Harvest taking an interest in the other animals. He usually just kept to the horses. 

“Gotta do what’s best for your children,” Jack agrees. 

Sam breathes out more clouds beside him, and passes him the vape. “He ain’t Creek, Jack.” That’s got the air of something real serious to it. 

“I know that.” He’s not nearly as crazy as he was that first time, by the time Sam found him. He knows Red Harvest isn’t a ghost; not one sent to torment him, and not his son, grown up and come to stand by him. “But he needs taking care of, and I’m bound to do it.” By the law, and some other things too. Red Harvest ain’t Crow, but he’s a young man separated from his kin, all the same. Jack’s got books to balance. And he owes Red Harvest himself more than a little. “And I love him, anyway.” 

He does; ain’t no shame in admitting that. Red Harvest has been living under their roof since he was just barely sixteen this time around. Be harder not to love him, by now. To not see him as something like a son, something like a brother. 

“Pains me to say it at times, but I do too,” Sam admits. 

Ain’t like that’s news to Jack. Sam’s a quiet man, but he loves just the same as everyone else. And after Jack had died the first time, Sam had stayed with Vasquez and Red Harvest, along with Ms. Emma Cullen and Teddy Q., for quite a few years, up until his own end. He’s fond of all of them, even Jack. Family is like that, though. And Sam’s proven himself quite the patriarch, gathering them all back up, helping to build themselves a home. Keeping them all in line, by hook or by crook, if necessary, which it sometimes is with Goody and Red Harvest. 

Which brings Jack to a thought him and Raven have been having. “Raven and me wanted to ask you something, you know.”

“What’s that then?”

“How do you feel about the name ‘Samantha’?” It’s a fine enough name, as far as they’re both concerned, and Raven had liked the idea of the baby having some history. “Raven wants something traditional in the middle, but she and I were thinking that might be a good first name for her.” 

It ain’t often a man like Sam Chisolm gets struck speechless, and especially not by men like Jack, but it seems like he’s managed it. 

The boys wander further on up the road, out of sight, probably off to the dorms, where Goody’s working on painting something on the wall. Something to match the barn, supposedly, not that Jack cares. Makes the buildings look awful pretty, to him, and Raven likes it too. She even likes Jack leaving his sculptures around the place, even if some of them aren’t all that good. 

Takes his mind off things though. Takes it to better places. Like now, this time. This time when he has a home, and a family again. Where he has Raven, and their baby on the way. 

“That’s a good name,” Sam says, sounding a bit funny. “Be real honored by it.” When Jack checks, he sees Sam rub the heel of his hand over his face. He wasn’t expecting that much of a reaction, not out of Sam. 

“We don’t have to, if it’s too much.” 

“Don’t make me get all sentimental,” Sam warns him. “I said I’d be honored, you take that as you will.” 

Jack nods, and takes the vape when Sam offers it. He needs to quit altogether, sooner rather than later. Bad habit to have, with a baby on the way. He still takes a hit now, though. 

Ain’t no explaining how this has happened; men aren’t meant to understand these kinds of things. Just make the best of them. And smoke that tastes like sugar, well, he can admit he does like that part.


	8. Emma

Matthew asks Emma to marry him on her eighteenth birthday. The moment is a bit tempered by the fact he does it with a ring pop. 

“You’re not serious,” she says, but takes it anyway. It’s red, so it’s either strawberry or cherry. Or so she thinks. Nope, it’s watermelon. “Damn it, Matthew, you couldn’t get a real flavor?” She’d of settled for blue raspberry. 

“Baby, that’s what the machine gave me,” Matthew replies, sticking the one he’s already opened in his mouth. It’s green apple, because Matthew is disgusting like that. “You want this one?” 

No, she does not. She’s never liked green apples, not in either lifetime, and she sure as hell don’t like it in candy flavor. Watermelon isn’t too bad. Just doesn’t have much flavor to it. “You telling me you spent a quarter on proposing to me?”

“Nope,” he says. “I spent two.” He waggles two fingers at her. “I wanted one, too.” 

“Asshole,” she mutters, smacking him in the knee. 

It’s a nice day out, people milling around the campus, some laid out on the grass like them, but not paying them any attention. “Emma, I’m a student. You’re lucky I could afford a ring pop.” 

“I brought you lunch,” she reminds him. Which he shouldn’t need reminding of, since he’s taking a bite of a burger right now, before he sticks the ring pop back in his mouth. “That’s gross.” 

“All ends up in my belly,” he replies cheerfully. “No, but seriously, baby. I just want to put it out there. That we should get married.” 

“You just want better financial aid,” she says. 

“That is a factor,” he admits, offering her his fries. “But I also just plain want to marry you. Don’t think I’m likely to find another woman who will go on a roaring rampage of revenge for me.” 

“I thought I told you to stay off of TV Tropes.” Matthew’s the worst for getting lost in that black hole. He can’t help himself; the man just wants to know everything. He’d been curious as all hell the first time, too. The invention of the Internet has not been kind to his time-management skills. “When’s your final start?”

“Not for another hour,” he says. “And it’s just math. I’ll be fine.” 

He will be. Matthew’s good at every subject, unsurprisingly. He’d always been a smart man. In this life, that translated to being valedictorian of their high school, even if it had been a pretty small high school, and being practical enough to come here to community college, instead of running off to a four-year school and crippling debt, as he put it. His intention was to be a paramedic, when this was over with. That was her Matthew; always looking to help people. 

Her, on the other hand, well, she’s got her own pursuits. “Never thought I’d end up married to a Pinkerton,” Matthew says, watching her as she fiddles with her laptop. The campus wifi isn’t great, but it’s free with Matthew’s log-in. 

“You bite your tongue, Matthew Cullen,” she says. 

“What? I know we didn’t have much good to say about ‘em the first time around, but historically, they come out pretty balanced. And they’d of hired you back then, too. That’s something.” He chews, and swallows, looking like he’s thinking. “Pinkerton saved Lincoln’s life.” 

That ain’t the point and he knows it. He’s just needling her. 

Matthew never met any of the others. He’d already been dead and gone before Emma came across Sam Chisolm. But she’s told him. Of course she has. She’s always been able to tell Matthew everything.

The first time, over a hundred years ago, Emma hadn’t thought much of Matthew when they first met. Oh, she thought he was plenty handsome, but so did he, and it had put her off for longer than she liked to admit. She hadn’t even liked Teddy Q. all that much at first, since he never seemed to show any sign of a personality of his own, just seeming content to be in Matthew’s shadow. 

Matthew had taken an interest in her though, right from the first day. She’d been walking down the street with her mother, thinking about nothing except that it was hot and that the dust from the road was making her eyes itch, when he’d appeared in front of them, the handsomest man she’d ever seen, taking off his hat and introducing himself straight away. _“Matthew Cullen, ladies, and over there is my companion, Teddy Q.”_

Her mother had thought he was too forward in the worst way, and after they’d walked by, she’d told Emma to keep her distance from him. 

If she hadn’t said it, Emma thinks she might have done that on her own. But being told not to do something was usually the fastest way to get her to do it. She’d always been a contrary child, in that way. Gotten her in more trouble than she could even remember. Girls weren’t supposed to be that way, not by people’s way of thinking back then. Weren’t supposed to have their own minds, their own thoughts. 

Shows what people know, doesn’t it?

Back then, she married Matthew when she was twenty-one, after he’d been courting her, whether she knew it or not, for almost two years. She really hadn’t, not for awhile, because of her own stubbornness, and the fact that Matthew was just so damn bad at it. He’d never failed to put his foot in his mouth with her for the first year, and Lord, he’d been lucky he was so damn handsome, or she might have taken real offense to it at some point or another. 

But he’d had dreams, when no one else seemed to. When he’d talked about them, he’d change; go from acting like a halfwit, to a man with some intelligence, some drive in him. She’d liked him when he talked like that. There’d been no sugar-coating how hard making those dreams real would be either. She’d liked that too. 

Emma’s parents, that first time around, and been from back East. They’d come out west to try and be something other than dirt poor, but they’d never seemed to stop complaining about how uncivilized it all was. Emma though, she was born in the prairies, where the sea of grass stretched out for forever until it touched the blue sky, and she didn’t know any different. It was her whole life, but still, she wanted to see more. Not much more, but just something. Something new. 

Matthew Cullen had been the only man in town who had offered that and seemed to mean it. And Matthew hadn’t been like the other men that tried to court her; he liked when she talked, liked her temper and her strength of mind. Listened too, didn’t just laugh her off. 

By and by, Emma had fallen in love with him. 

So she’d married him, against her parents’ wishes, and ridden out with him and Teddy Q., to find something new. Like Matthew, he’d grown on her too, the little pieces of himself finally showing who he was, outside of Matthew’s shadow. He really had been content to stay in it, for the most part, and hers as well, as time passed, but she’d found that wasn’t from lack of his own mind, but rather, just feeling safer that way. It had taken her longer than she ever wanted to admit to work out why that was exactly, and she’d felt like a right fool once she had. 

Once Matthew had realized she knew, then another facet of their friendship emerged, that being Matthew’s constant teasing of him. Never cruel. No, Matthew didn’t have a cruel bone in his body, that time around. 

He still hasn’t managed to grow one in this time either, and she still likes that about him. 

They don’t get married when she’s eighteen, ring pop or not, mostly because it’s ridiculous, in this day and age, and also because she’s still living at her parents’ house and Matthew can only afford to rent a room in an overcrowded house three streets over from the community college. Emma loves the man, loved him through a whole lifetime and right into this one, but she ain’t living in that house, not for all the gold in California. 

No, this time, they get married when she’s twenty-one again, and Matthew’s been a paramedic for over a year already. She’s a programmer now herself, and they’re both working more hours than they’d like, but they’re making a decent income together. They rent a little apartment not far from the hospital Matthew works at, and get by with one car, somehow or another, though it leads to no small amount of arguments. 

Every extra cent they make though makes up for it. The first time, Matthew had left the money to her, too. Unusual thing, back then, but Matthew had always said he wasn’t great at keeping track of how much he spent, and Emma was more than suited for the task. It had ended up serving her well, after he died. 

She doesn’t like thinking about that, though. Neither does he, not really. 

They’ve been married one whole year this time, Emma just three days past her twenty-second birthday, when Matthew brings up something else she doesn’t like thinking about, after he sees her sitting cross-legged on the sofa with the laptop in her lap. It’s close to midnight, and she’s still searching, not for the first time. “Baby, what if there’s nothing to find?”

“Found Rose Creek, didn’t I?” That had required more than even the Internet could provide. She’d had to request copies of old maps from some archives in California, in the end, but she’d found it. It had been renamed sometime after she herself had died, and then absorbed into another town, along with a couple others. But she’d found it. She’d proven to herself they weren’t crazy. Rose Creek had been real. They had been real. It had all been real. “And I found Sam Chisolm the first time. Without Google.” 

Matthew sets a glass of water on the coffee table, for her, she realizes. “What if they came back at different times? There’s no rules to this. Mostly because it’s crazy, and we’re crazy.” He smiles at her when she side-eyes him. “You can’t get mad at me for telling the truth.”

“When has that ever stopped me?” 

Gently, he takes the laptop out of her hold, closes it, and sets it on the coffee table. Then he hands her the water. Taking his point, she drinks it, and after the first sip, realizes she’s so thirsty she has to down it. “Emma, you can’t keep obsessing over this. It’s not healthy.” 

“It’s not about what’s healthy,” she says. “I can’t explain it. I just...I need to find them. I need to know they’re alright, this time around. You weren’t there, you don’t know what they were like. John Wayne _wishes_ he could have been half the man Sam Chisolm was. And the rest of them...Lord, but they were all half-crazy, but you had to be. We had to be. To do what we did.” She bites her lip, trying to put it into words. “With you gone, Matthew, I thought that’d be it for me. I had no plan, after taking out Bogue. But then...they just became my new plan. And I can’t think about anything else, it feels like.” 

He listens, like he always has with her. He listens, and maybe he doesn’t quite understand, but he does say, “Maybe I didn’t know them. But I knew Teddy Q. And I do miss him. I’m glad he took care of you, after I was gone. I know that wasn’t his way, but he still did.”

“‘Wasn’t his way’? When wasn’t that man taking care of someone?” She didn’t know what Quakers did to their children, but they must have practically poured grace and patience down his throat as a child. It was the only explanation she had for how he’d put up with Vasquez the way he had. Lord knows she’d come close to throttling him more than once over the years. 

“I meant with women,” Matthew clarifies. Oh. Well, yeah, that was true. “I will never forget you trying to set him up with Lobelia Parker. That was a fun time.”

God, why did he have to remind her of that? “Maybe for you, jerk!” 

For the life of her, she hadn’t understood why Matthew found the whole thing so damn funny at the time, or why Teddy Q. had seemed so oblivious to Lobelia. She’d been a pretty woman, sweet as could be as well, with a decent-sized farm coming to her, and she’d been awfully fond of Teddy Q. Emma had thought it was a good match, except that Teddy Q. just never seemed to catch on. 

It wasn’t until later, when she realized, and then she’d been so irritated with Matthew she hadn’t been able to believe it. It had been wasting her time, and Lobelia’s to boot, though she’d ended up happy enough, married to Joseph Swiss. 

“If it helps, Teddy never knew what you were up to,” Matthew says, still laughing now. “Used to be the funniest damn thing to me, watching girls throw themselves at him. I don’t think he ever noticed.” 

Emma can’t blame them. Teddy Q. had been a good-looking man, even if he wasn’t as handsome as Matthew, and he’d been kind and gentle too. Girls had probably been setting their cap for him for years. 

“I hope he did get to come back,” Matthew says. “Maybe he can actually get himself a boyfriend.” 

She shakes her head, as he pulls her up off the couch. It’s long past time for bed. “Who says he didn’t?” 

She’d known, back then, just what was going on. Of course she’d known. But he hadn’t talked to her about it, had kept himself sewn up tighter than a banker’s wallet, so she doesn’t talk about it either. There’s no telling if he’d have wanted it known, even now. He kept all her secrets in that life; she’ll keep his in this one. 

“One day, I’m going to find out just what you’re getting at with all that,” he promises. 

“Will you now?” She steps into the bathroom, pumping some soap into her hand while the water warms up enough she can wash her face. Off in the bedroom, she can hear Matthew moving around, doing whatever, before she hears the bed creak as he gets into it. When she joins him, she has to nudge him, getting him to put his gangly legs on his side. 

After he turns the light off on his side, leaving the room dark, except for the streetlights coming in through the window, he says, “Something I wanted to talk to you about, actually.” 

“What’s that then?” she asks, turned away from him, her eyes already closed. She should have used some eye drops when she was still in the bathroom, too many hours of staring at a screen taking their toll. But she’s all comfy now, so fuck it. Matthew must have washed the bedclothes today after he got off work. They smell nice, and they have that soft, clean feeling. 

Beside her, he stretches and the whole bed moves. God, she loves him, but he’s too damn tall. “How would you feel about moving?”

She takes a minute to think about it. They’ve got a lot saved up, maybe not as much as some, but enough they could afford a move, as long as it wasn’t too expensive, and they both had jobs right away. She doesn’t want to risk them going without health insurance. Lord knows, that’s when something would happen to one of them. “You looking to pick up stakes?” 

“You know I don’t like it here too much.” That’s an understatement. They both came around again in South Dakota, of all places, and here they still are. Emma can’t claim any love for it, herself. She’d only stayed because, well, Matthew was here, and they both had jobs here. There wasn’t a reason to go. “I’ve been thinking maybe we could go somewhere warmer.”

“Like where?”

“Don’t think we could afford California, not this time,” he says. “But how do you feel about New Mexico?” 

Emma doesn’t feel one way or the other about New Mexico. She’s never given it any thought. But they both have tomorrow off. “Ask me in the morning,” she says. It’s probably already a foregone conclusion. Matthew wouldn’t bring it up unless he’s been thinking about this for awhile, has likely already been looking into where exactly they would go, where there were jobs and cheap enough housing. 

But he can convince her in the morning. For now, she needs some sleep.

Maybe because of what she was up to before bed, or maybe she’s just feeling that kind of way, but that night, she dreams. One of those dreams that’s built up from memories and wishing. They’re sitting on the porch, the sun setting, and there’s a hand-rolled cigarette pinched between her fingers, the heavy smell of weed in her lungs, to go along with the foggy feeling in her head. 

Vasquez is telling some story, not making much sense, but that’s how dreams go. It’s more his voice Emma is remembering, the ease of having him and the others close. Vasquez could always tell a story. He had a good speaking voice. Sometimes, if the winter had kept them indoors for too long, he could be talked into reading out loud from one of Teddy’s books. He’d had more than enough of them lying around, for the time, usually bought off whoever was coming through, before the whole thing with Bogue. 

After, when it was just the five of them still living, they’d usually have one or three for Teddy when they came home between jobs. Most of them had been those cheap ones, full of made-up stories about settlers and Indians. Absolute trash, but for some reason, the men had liked them. Mostly liked laughing at them. 

Sam was the only one who managed to pick out good ones, real books. 

In her dream, Sam’s laughing at the story, and that thing happens to her, when a person realizes they’re dreaming. She struggles to hold onto it, but the damage is done, and she wakes up, in the here and now. 

Good thing, because it’s past nine. That’s late for her. 

In their little living room, Matthew’s already up, with coffee and some yogurt and granola. He left them out for her, so he can’t have been up much earlier. She forgoes the coffee for a glass of soda though, because she’s an adult, and she can. It’s a damn good thing dentists are something more than a man with pliers and a bottle of whiskey these days, or she’d be screwed. 

It was her thing, the last time. She loved sweets, but she’d wanted to keep her teeth and her money, so she’d restrained herself. But Sam would always bring something back for her anyway, whenever they came home. A bag of peppermints, or ginger candy, usually. Sometimes licorice. A couple of times, it had been cold enough and they’d been further south enough he could bring back chocolate. She’d never had anything as good as chocolate, in that life. 

But she does like yogurt too. And the honey she pours in. 

Matthew makes a face at her when he sees it, but whatever, she brushes her teeth. 

“So, what about New Mexico?” she asks. 

“I don’t know. I went there a lot when I was a kid, you know.” When Matthew’s parents had gotten divorced, back when he was about three or so, his mother, Jolene, had gone down to New Mexico. She’d been some kind of pagan, or just a nature-lover. Matthew always said she’d seemed a lot happier down there than she ever did up here, even though she’d lived in a trailer and made a living doing odd jobs. 

Emma’s parents hadn’t approved. She distinctly remembered that. Back before, when Emma still didn’t quite remember everything from before, but had still been more observant than the usual six-year-old, she remembers them both clucking their tongues over Jolene. Something about her mama had named her right. 

That never made much sense to Emma; Jolene in the song was supposedly breaking up someone else’s marriage, not her own, and Emma never really saw how that Jolene was at fault anyway. Matthew’s mother had never remarried anyway, and as far as Emma knew, she never broke up any marriages. She’d died of cancer when Matthew was about twelve. 

“You never talk much about all that,” she says. 

“I was missing Mom too much for a while,” he says, shrugging. “And I got used to not talking about her. Dad didn’t like to.” Yeah, but Emma just bets that Matthew’s stepmother didn’t like it more. She was a nice woman, but no one likes to hear their spouse talk about their ex. “Whenever I was down there with her though, there was always something almost magical about it. Probably just because I was with her, but still. What with all our crazy, it just feels like a good fit.” 

Well, Emma never did like South Dakota. “Guess we better start looking for jobs,” she says. 

It’s a funny thing, but they used to tease Vasquez about that. About Mexico. _“Don’t the outlaws usually run off to Mexico?”_ He would always scoff, and say something like, _“Lucky bastards.”_

Now here she is, running off to _New_ Mexico. God, that would make him laugh, wouldn’t it? 

Her parents aren’t happy about the decision. Of course they’re not. 

“You have a job, here,” her mother insists. 

She wonders if the others got born to the same parents this time around, or if she’s just lucky like that. ‘Lucky’. It never made much sense to her, why she remembers and they don’t. She’d learned quickly as a child to never bring it up, because that was the fastest way to get her to sent to her room without supper. They weren’t going to put up with any ‘crazy talk’ from her, and luckily for Emma, she might have been just a child, but she had a grown woman’s sense already. She learned to keep it to herself.

Apparently, moving to New Mexico is also some kind of ‘crazy talk’. “If you and Matthew are having problems, you can just come home,” her mother says. “Your room is still made up, you know that. Makes sense for you to keep the car. I can get your father to clean out the other part of the garage.” 

Emma takes a breath, calms herself down. “We’re not having problems. We just don’t want to stay here.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, not to me.” Her mother is one of those people who can make ‘not to me’ sound like a damning statement, like anyone who has a different opinion must be either stupid or lying. She looks at Emma, her eyes narrowed. “Honestly, Emma, you’ve just been making some mistakes these past couple of years, and I just don’t understand what’s happening. We didn’t raise you like that.”

They could have had this conversation over the phone. Matthew had told her to just call. He’d warned her that if she went over here, she’d just get mad. Why couldn’t she just learn to listen to him? She should really know better by now. 

“Mom, it’s not a big deal.” It _is_ , but now Emma’s kind of pissed off. “We’ve both found jobs, we’ve found an apartment, we’re fine.” It wasn’t that different from the one they had now, judging from the pictures. Except it had hardwood floors. Well, hardwood laminate, but Emma hates the carpet in their apartment right now, so she’ll take it. Matthew’s job might be noble, but it’s dirty too, and she’s pretty damn sure they’re not getting their deposit back thanks to what his shoes have done to the entryway. 

Plus, that hole in the wall of the living room Matthew swears was her fault, but she maintains it was both their fault. They’re married, they file joint taxes, so any stupid shit either one of them do is joint as well. It was that way last time, and she doesn’t see why that should change. 

Besides, he was the one who lost three of their goats the last time around. 

“It’s a ridiculous idea,” her mother says. 

She’d said that last time too, when Emma told them she was going to marry Matthew, and go out further west with him. She’d been wrong then. And she was wrong now. 

No matter how bad things had gone, with Bogue, and that day outside the church, when she lost him, Emma had never doubted she’d made the right choice by following Matthew.

So they go to New Mexico. 

It’s different, that’s for sure. It’s warmer, in a completely different way from South Dakota. The landscape isn’t like anything she can remember seeing in this life, but seems somewhat familiar from last time. Maybe it’s just the old stucco buildings, even though Rose Creek hadn’t been anything but wood and dirt. Might just be the mountains. They feel like old friends, like coming home. 

Matthew is excited, glad to put South Dakota at their backs, and he’s also happy to be where his mother had also been happy. His father had sent them down with the last box of her things, what had been sent north after she died, the top of the box still neatly taped, with someone’s blocky handwriting on top written in black sharpie. 

“Damn, but Jolene leaned into the flower child thing, didn’t she?” She didn’t really remember Jolene much, herself. When she’d been living in South Dakota, she’d just been like all the other moms in the neighborhood; sensible clothes, her short blonde hair in a neat bob. 

The picture Matthew puts up on the wall in their new place, pulled from the box, shows an entirely different woman. Same face, but her hair is long, dirty blonde then, with a bandanna on and a sundress. She does look happy, with Matthew pulled tight to her, him about ten in the picture, but already tall. 

“Like I said, I thought it was magic,” Matthew says, straightening it, while Emma sorts through the rest of the stuff. There’s a suncatcher, sort of pretty, and a curtain of blue and green beads. “Can we hang those?” 

They’re not Emma’s taste, but they don’t bother her either. Besides, they brighten up the wall, and Teddy Q.’s favorite color was blue. He’d used to gather up all the lupine that grew in the ditches during the summer, put them in a jug in the kitchen. The beads remind her of it. 

The summer after he’d died, she’d done the same. Had thought it might make her feel better. Some part of her had done it hoping Red Harvest would come back that summer after all, and he would have liked to see them. He hadn’t come back, but she’d known that. Had suspected he wouldn’t be able to at all, before long. No, she’d known that look on his face, those last days. Mirrored the same emptiness in her own heart. 

“What do you think?” Matthew’s put the suncatcher up now, on the sliding glass door. 

With the light on it, it actually is pretty. Paints some colors across the living room, helps it look less empty. “I like it,” she says. Even if she didn’t, she’d let it stay, just because Matthew looks so happy to see it. 

They didn’t bring much with them, so they live out of boxes and plastic totes for the first month, while they put up shelves and try to piece together a household again in their time off. Matthew is delighted to find an ‘antique store’, full of things that could be charitably called quirky. He buys a coffee mug that looks like a cowboy hat, but has to work hard to convince her to let him bring the rusted wrought-iron sun into the apartment. He promises she’ll like it once it’s inside, and God help her, he’s right.

Back the first time, she used to dry flowers in bunches, to keep color in the house during the dead of winter. She buys bunches of baby’s breath and statice from the florist, wrapped in brown butcher’s paper, and does the same again, hanging them from the sun. It fits the aesthetic around here anyway. 

It’s just her, a lot of the time, Matthew pulling as many shifts as he can manage to make up for their depleted savings and the pay cut she took to come here. He doesn’t mind, says he likes his new coworkers. Mentions there’s a nurse taller than him that he likes, even if the guy doesn’t seem to like him much, from what Emma can tell. That’s always Matthew though; he wants to be everyone’s friend.

There’s only so much time she can spend staring at a computer, so when she has time to herself, she wanders around town. It’s pretty, prettier than their hometown by a mile, the dreariness of South Dakota miles away from the bright sunshine and color here. She pokes around the place, trying to find her own niche, but can’t seem to find it.

She finds plenty of stuff to keep her occupied in the meantime though. There’s a gallery for local artists in town, and she spends a day looking through it. One person, a ‘G.R.’ has a lot of charcoals and watercolors displayed in a corner, along with some photos of their larger works, which seem to be mostly on barn walls. Their work is mostly plants and horses, things like that, but there’s one she lingers on. A life drawing, more an outline, of a man standing on a porch. 

There’s no particular reason to like it so much, only that it reminds her of Sam. The man in the drawing is tall, all in black, and he seems to be standing like how Sam would on the front porch of that clapboard house, over a hundred years ago. 

She doesn’t buy it, deciding to think on it some more. 

But when she gets home, the screen shut on the sliding door to let the air in, she sits with her laptop and tries again. _Sam Chisolm_ , she tries. 

Still a hundred men with that name, and no sign of the one she’s looking for. Frustrated, and finally starting to feel a little hopeless, she puts the computer back on the coffee table and curls up on the couch, trying to stave off the wave of sadness that’s trying to wash over her. She misses him, and the others, so much. She has Matthew back, when she was sure she’d never see him again in any life, but it’s not enough. 

It’s a strange life, this one she has, living in the now, with so much of her heart still stuck in the then. If she hadn’t had them, her friends, her family, that last time, she’s not entirely sure she would have survived losing Matthew. When Bogue was finally gone, him and the rest of his men, there had been an emptiness in her, that place where Matthew’s love was, that had filled with righteous anger upon his death. Without that love, or even that rage, she hadn’t been sure just who she still was. 

It had been Teddy Q. that had made her go back to the house. He’d had to walk with a crutch for a bit after the whole thing, a bullet from some Blackstone having winged his leg, and he hadn’t been able to take care of the animals on his own anymore.

There hadn’t been much. Her and Matthew had kept some goats, a henhouse. Their garden. And the house. It had still been enough to break her heart all over again, facing what they had built together on her own. 

But she’d pulled through, because she had to, and because she had Teddy Q. there to help. The others too, when they came home for shelter. The people in town had never seemed to know what to do with the lot of them, after it was over, but they made do with each other. They made a family, a strange one, maybe. A family, all the same. 

Until it was over. First Vasquez, brought back to be buried in Rose Creek. Then Sam, though Red Harvest had told them he had put Sam to rest in the way of his people. Hadn’t been much of an option, they had been so far north at the time. And finally, Teddy Q., killed by strangers on the front porch, for reasons she never thought were all that justified. 

Red Harvest had left, but she didn't blame him.

And then just her, all alone in a town full of people. Just her and her memories, until, just shy of her fiftieth birthday, she’d finally died too. It hadn’t even been all that interesting, which had been something of a letdown, considering the way she’d lived. She’d been getting older, is all, and she’d lost her footing on the stirrup, fallen and struck her head. A few hours later, she’d gone to bed, and just like that, she’d never woken up. No last words, no final wishes. 

She’d just gone to bed. 

And then now, waking up in this world, not sure what to make of the memories fighting it out in her head. The dark-haired boy down the street, with his dark curls and his wide smile. Already the handsomest boy on the block. 

This time, where Emma’s not bound by the whims of men, and the decisions they make. She can do as she likes, on her own if she wants. But what she wanted was to marry that boy again, and this time, try and get it right. So far, so good. 

But she has to find them. If she can at least find Sam, she knows he’ll find the others. 

She falls asleep on the couch, thinking about all of it, all of them, and that clapboard house, the warm air from outside keeping her comfortable. 

She’s not dreaming, not exactly. One of those funny kinds that happens when a body is still sort of awake. It’s the warmth doing it, reminding her of other days, a long time ago. The smell of the grass and cigarettes, of the men talking. Red Harvest saying something, nonsense in the dream, but she knows it’s in his own language. She never could get a grasp on it. Sam is repeating him, and it sounds just the same to her, but Red Harvest shakes his head, dismisses him. 

Vasquez says something in Spanish, a curse word, she knows, maybe insulting Red Harvest’s mother. Spanish she could at least get the gist of, by then. Red Harvest doesn’t like that, says something back in that surprisingly perfect Spanish of his. 

Asshole. Had they really been so stupid as to believe he didn’t speak much, if any, English? That was how he was though, his way of joking. She’d gotten used to it, come to like it, once she realized it. 

Because it’s a dream, she knows more than she should, the power of retrospect, and the sadness of it. When did this conversation happen? Some far-away summer, maybe just before they rode out on another job, or maybe just after they got back. 

The sadness wakes her a little, reminds her it’s just a memory playing out. She stays curled on the couch for a moment, before stretching her legs out, feeling one of her ankles crack. Funny thing, the same ankle used to do that last time too. 

It’s only the sound of sirens that make her get up, checking to make sure it’s not a fire truck or an ambulance for the building. Just a cop, though, when she steps out onto the balcony to look. They’re only on the second-floor, and it looks like it’s over nothing; the car being pulled didn’t have room on the side of the road, so they’re using the apartment’s parking lot. 

The cop who gets out is tall, about as tall as Matthew, and walks up casually to the car, talking with them, the lights on the car still going. 

“Seriously, Reyes, get that tail-light fixed. It’s cheaper than the tickets at this point.” 

It’s as clear as day, his voice. She knows that voice. She knows that face, when he turns to go back to the squad car. She knows that face so well, has missed it for over a hundred years. This isn’t a memory, isn’t her mind playing tricks on her. 

“Vasquez!” It’s not her best plan, but she doesn’t think she can get downstairs fast enough to catch him, and when has she ever thought her plans out anyway?. “Vasquez, damn it!” 

It startles him, and he looks around, before spotting her. She waves, stupid thing to do, but she does it anyway, watching him laugh. He holds up a hand to her, heading to his squad car, presumably to get it the hell out of the way, while the other car leaves, and Emma, well, she tears out of the apartment and down the stairs, not even locking the door or putting on shoes, because _Vasquez_. 

Vasquez, in a police uniform of all things, alive and real, and _here_ , a pair of sunglasses perched on his head. 

He lifts her off the ground when she throws her arms around his neck, spinning them around in a slow circle. “Hello,” he says, into her hair. “Where have you been, huh? We’ve been looking for you, _bonita_. Too many Emma Cullens in this world.” 

“Shut up, you never told me your full name,” she scolds. There were thousands upon thousands of Vasquez’s in the world. He’d been the veritable needle in a haystack. “And Red Harvest barely even had one, what was I supposed to do?” She’d tried to find him, figuring maybe his name was unique enough, but all she ever got back on those searches was some book written in the thirties or forties. “Oh my God.” It’s all she can think of to say. Needle in a haystack, but here’s the needle, right in front of her. 

All her searching, and here he is, coming up right on his own, surprising her. Lord, but didn’t he do that the first time, too? She supposes she should be grateful he didn’t lasso her. 

He sets her down on the sidewalk, the cement almost too hot for her bare feet, and holds her at arm’s length, looking her up and down. “Look at that, we’re the same age again. That’s something.” He raises his eyebrows. “Sam’s only twenty-eight, can you believe that?” 

_Sam_. “You found Sam?” 

Vasquez waggles his hand. “Eh. Details. Technically, he found Josh.” _Faraday_. “But it was a two-for-one deal. Technically, it was three-for-one, because I found Goodnight, and brought them both out here. You should see Goody, he’s only eighteen.” He leans in close. “Hey, guess what? Turns out Red is a really annoying teenager. Who would have guessed?”

Anyone and everyone, she would think. The man had barely managed basic social etiquette as an adult. “You’ve got Red Harvest,” she says out loud, though. She doesn’t care how old he is or how annoying he supposedly is, they’ve found Red Harvest. He’s safe, and alive. “And Goodnight? What about Billy?” 

“We’ve got everyone, Emma,” Vasquez says, rubbing her arms. “Just been looking for you.” He smiles, big and wide, and he never smiled like that much the last time. He looks so happy. “What are you doing here?”

“Matthew wanted to come down here, get away from South Dakota.” She almost laughs, but maybe she’s just crying. “Guess you got to go back to Mexico after all. Sort of.”

“It’ll do,” he replies. “You got Matthew back?” 

He’d never known Matthew, just like Matthew had never known him. But Emma knows she’d talked about him plenty, hadn’t been able to help it. The others had never minded, not that way people always seemed to when hearing about the dead. They never told her to just forget, forget and move on. 

But they do get to meet now. Matthew gets to meet Vasquez, and Red Harvest, and Sam Chisolm. “He’s here. He’s a paramedic.” Another name comes to mind, one Vasquez hasn’t said yet. “What about Teddy? Has anyone found him?” 

To her surprise, Vasquez laughs, folding her into another hug, easier with her standing on the sidewalk and him still in the street. “You’re going to _love_ that story, _preciosa_. It’s a great story.” She can feel him kiss the top of her head, squeezing her. “I knew you’d find us. That’s how that story goes, every time, right?” 

That is how the story went last time. She found Sam, and Sam found them. Just seems it’s gotten a little mixed up, this time. A little mixed up, but it’s all shaken out the same. 

“C’mere,” Vasquez cajoles, holding out his phone. She gets the meaning, and poses with him for the camera. “Wait’ll you see it, Emma. The ranch, everyone. Jack’s wife got another go-around too, I think you’ll like her. Jack even bathes regularly.” 

Jack Horne, too. Jack Horne, and the wife he’d mourned so deeply. Yeah, Emma would like to meet the woman who took a look at Jack Horne and decided to marry him. She wants to meet them all again. She wants Matthew to meet them, meet her family, the one she loves. 

After just a few seconds, the phone buzzes, and again Vasquez laughs, then shows her. 

It’s from Sam. 

_Well if it ain’t Joan of Arc._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're almost done. Last will be Sam, at last.


	9. Sam

Some god, maybe Jack’s, maybe Raven’s, or hell, maybe even Red Harvest’s, has seen fit to test Sam Chisolm in every life. He wouldn’t trade this one for the last time around, no, not for all the money in the world, but lord, he is still being tested. 

“Knock it off,” he orders. Granted, he ain’t got the slightest idea just what Goody and Red are fighting about this time, but experience tells him it’s likely stupid. He can’t even blame it on teenage hormones, because he knew Goody as a man grown the first time, and he lived on drama just as fiercely as he does now. 

As for Red, well. Sometimes Sam thinks he starts shit just because he’s plain bored, and wants to see if he can. 

“Sam, you tell him the damn dorm don’t belong to him,” Goody insists. 

“Do I look like your mother? Or for that matter, his?”

From the table, where Faraday’s going through dishes with Raven, he says, “Well, in a certain light…” Raven thinks that’s funny, laughing. 

“Why’re you two just listening to this?” Ain’t no reason why one of them couldn’t have stepped in. Hell, Raven’s the one with her name on all that legal guardianship paperwork. Legally, Sam doesn’t have any say over what Red says or does. “Woman, you own the dorm.” 

“They can burn it to the ground for all I care,” she replies calmly. “No one’s living out there.” She settles back in the bench seat, apparently trying to crack her neck. “Especially not you, Red. You’re sleeping inside this summer. I mean it. Keeps me up at night, worrying that place is going to fall down on your head.” 

Red don’t look too happy about that, but he generally looks unhappy, so Sam don’t pay it no mind. 

“So I can paint what I want on it,” Goody argues. “She just said so.” 

“No,” Red says, in that final way of his. 

“How about no one’s painting anything until you two can agree?” Sam doesn’t make it sound like a question, because it ain’t one. “Now go on, get, you both got chores that need doing.” He doesn’t know if they do or not, but chances are they do. Mostly, he just wants them both to shut up. His shoulder is hurting him, and he needs to lie down for a bit. Preferably with some peace and quiet. “Go on, find something to do with yourselves.”

Red shrugs, but does as he’s told. Goody, on the other hand, follows Sam down the hall. 

“You alright?” he asks Sam. 

“Shoulder’s acting up.” It’s not too bad, not yet, but it’s making him irritable. He’s going to have to schedule an appointment, see if he either needs to go back to physical therapy or start thinking about surgery. “Dislocated it bad when I was in the Army, and they didn’t set it right.” 

Goody nods. “World changes, but Army medics don’t.”

That gets Sam to laugh, and he lets Goody follow him into his bedroom. He’s not looking to sleep, just lie down, and Goody’s always entertaining company, if nothing else. 

And Goody always has something on him. Once the door is shut, he pulls a dropper bottle out of his hoodie pocket and hands it off to Sam. Thank god for Billy. Always keeping Goody, and therefore Sam, on the level. Well, by way of Teddy, these days, though how he’s buying the stuff up there in Colorado, Sam doesn’t want to know. Plausible deniability and all that. 

It’s not opium these days either, but Sam genuinely has no idea how one would go about getting the same stuff they smoked back then. Might not even exist anymore, the way drugs have changed. This does the job though, and after a few minutes, he feels some tension he’s been carrying thanks to the pain ease. 

“So what’s Red putting his foot down about?” Sam asks, after he’s feeling a bit better. 

“I wanted to put something up from _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ ,” Goody says, leaning back behind himself and cranking open the window. It’s going to rain soon, unusual weather, but welcome. The air that comes in smells wet already. “It’s me and Billy’s favorite.” 

“Figures you two would like that one.” They are an odd pair, but they click together like a pocket watch. Sam can’t claim he understands them, but that’s just because they’re both queer men. In all senses of the word. “Red doesn’t like Shakespeare. You’re going to have to pick something else.” Sam’s not interested in Goody turning the dorm into a Valentine, anyway. And he wants to keep the peace. 

“He just hasn’t been exposed to him properly,” Goody refutes. “Either that, or he’s just saying it to be defiant.” 

No, Sam doesn’t think that’s it. “Red’s not that deep, Goody.” Not in this subject, at least. “He likes Lord of the Rings, try something from that.” That’s genuinely one of the most surprising things Red could have done this time around, as far as Sam’s concerned. Those books ain’t short, or easy to get through. But he’s seen him reading them. A couple of times. Even named that damn paint horse _Eowyn_. 

“I think I liked him better when he didn’t speak English,” Goody says. 

“He was just fucking with us.” Sam had been suspicious from the start on that one. He’d known Red spoke some English, understood it more than he was letting on, but he couldn’t prove the man was perfectly fluent, and frankly, it hadn’t been his most pressing problem at the time. “Spoke French, too.” Comanche, English, Spanish, and French, all spoken and understood just fine.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have minded knowing that the first time,” Goody admits, rubbing his mouth and looking a touch sheepish. “Might have run my mouth a little to Billy when Red was lurking around. About some things he probably didn’t need to be hearing.” 

“Not like he cared.” 

Goody laughs, takes a hit off his own vape. “No, I seriously doubt that.” He sits back on the little loveseat Sam’s got under the window, crossing his legs. “Could have knocked me over with a finger when I found out about him and young Teddy Q.” 

“You two are the same age, this time,” Sam reminds him. He thinks on that subject some, an odd one. “You weren’t around for that part, is all. It was a slow thing.” A slow thing he’d tried to stop in its tracks, as a matter of fact. He wasn’t inclined that way, or really any way, though they didn’t have a word for how Sam is back then, but he wasn’t blind to it. Wasn’t much of a trick, if someone knew Red Harvest well enough, and Teddy Q. too, to see what was building there. “I told him not to.” 

He can hear Goody breathe in, and exhale, sees the new clouds over his head. “Why’d you do that then?”

“I was trying to keep them both out of trouble.” Because that was going to be nothing but trouble in the end, for both of them. The kind that got people killed. Teddy Q. wasn’t Goody, didn’t have a fearsome reputation and the kind of personna to keep people off the scent. And Red Harvest wasn’t Billy, able to meld into society, play the part necessary for that kind of thing. “Knew it would end badly.” 

Just because he’d known it though, it didn’t give him any pleasure to come back around in this life and find out how right he’d been. There was nothing he could have done to stop it, anyway, once they’d decided on that course. All he could do then was hope it stayed quiet. 

“Well, we know it wasn’t because you had any designs on Teddy Q.,” Goody says. “We both know white boys with an inclination towards romance aren’t your taste.” He’s trying to lighten the mood. Goody’s always been easy about embarrassing himself, when it’s little things, for the bigger picture. 

Sam hasn’t thought about that in a long time, certainly not in this life. “That was something, having a decorated Confederate come on to me.” Surprising, in its way, but not really. He’d had Goody pegged not long after meeting him. And Goody hadn’t been in the best place then. He’d been desperate for any kind of affection. Sam was willing to give that, at least, just not the kind Goody had been angling for. “My mother always did say I was a handsome boy, though.”

“Yeah? Smart woman.” He takes another hit, blows a smoke ring. “How about now? Just where are you inclined?”

It’s not a dangerous question anymore. The first time, it was. For Goody, and for Sam. “Not inclined at all.” Back then, he had been able to get away with claiming he was married to the job, or just plain didn’t have enough money to support a wife and a household. Wasn’t true, not entirely, but a man who had no desire at all would have been something people didn’t understand. Sam wasn’t interested in being something people didn’t understand. Tended to get people killed. “They got a word for me now. _Asexual_.” 

Labels interest Sam about as much as romance, but it is comforting, in its way, to have one. 

He swears he can feel Goody thinking from all the way over here. His shoulder is feeling a bit better, so Sam sits up, trying to ease it into a gentle sort of stretch. The THC has kicked in, the pain now just a dull background noise, not a stabbing feeling. 

It takes a couple of minutes, longer than Sam expected, but finally Goody says, “That does explain some things.” He nods, smiles. “Soothes the wound, too. It wasn’t me, it was everyone.” 

“You are amazingly self-centered,” Sam replies dryly. 

“Yeah, Billy says that too,” Goody says. “Ain’t all that unusual a thing, in any case, being ace. Or, well, people admit to it now.” That’s true. And it is a relief, albeit a small one. Sam never thought there was anything wrong with him, exactly, not in either life, just knew he wasn’t like most men seemed to be. He wasn’t interested in the saloon girls, and didn’t really understand just what drew the men around him to them, why they’d spend money they couldn’t spare just for just an hour of a lady’s time. 

He understood _love_. That wasn’t a mystery to him at all. Sam loved plenty. Loved fiercely, more than was good for him, in some cases. 

Like Goody. Loving Goody was more trouble than it was worth a lot of the time, but Sam had loved him all the same. Story wasn’t any different with Red Harvest, or Vasquez, Emma Cullen, or Teddy Q. Loving them had been dangerous, could have just as easily gotten that noose back around his neck, especially if someone had gotten it in their head that he loved Emma in a different way than he did. 

That was the trouble he had been trying to save Red Harvest from, back then. White people didn’t like it when their own took up with the ‘lesser races’. Got violent about it. Hell, it still happened now, in this life. 

Red Harvest was as stubborn as a mule, but he usually paid heed to Sam. Not that time. No, not that time. 

“You ever worry about what would happen?” Sam asks, taking a long hit, hearing the coil of the vape crackle. “If anyone found out about you and Billy?”

“No, we were smart. Kept moving too much for anyone to get the notion in their head.” His letters had come from all over, delivered to the post box Sam kept in his base of operations, so to speak. Sam would come back every couple of weeks, gather up his mail, and have three letters from three different places. “Besides, we didn’t let ourselves be close in front of average folks. It was different when it was you, and the rest of them.” He frowns, shrugs. “Different now. In a good way.” 

There’s a lot of things that are different now. So many things that even Goody can’t understand. For Sam, the world’s changed in ways he didn’t much dare hope for back then. A Black president, even if it took more than a century to get there. His mother, back that first time, she would have slapped him upside the head for such foolish talk. 

But then, last time, Sam wasn’t born a free man, and neither was she. A future where they could be just that had seemed impossible too, until it wasn’t. And it had been good, at least for a little while. 

He did find her again this time, her and his sister. Kept his distance though. There’d been no sign they remembered, and he likes it that way. He wants them to have this fresh start, in this brighter future, even if ain’t all that great just yet. They don’t need his baggage, either way. And he lived with their ghosts around his neck too long in that life. No, he’s content to let them have their lives, brand new, and without the pain of the past.

Him, he’ll make do with this family, and he’s happy to do it. Lord knows, they keep him plenty busy. “Goats get milked today?” Raven ain’t really fit to do it anymore, and him and Jack had been working in town all day. 

“Course they did,” Goody says. “Billy did it this morning. Red and me took care of the horses, and fed the chickens.” They need to look at getting a dog, to guard the chickens. The goats do a pretty good job at keeping the coyotes away, but that’s not a sure thing, and they’ve lost a few here lately. Probably hawks, but a dog will be good for scaring them off too. “Don’t know why you’re worrying, we know what we’re doing.” 

That’s true enough. They’d all done more than their share of ranching and farming that first time around, when money was tight. Sam had been born on a plantation, himself. It’s not something he sees much need to reflect on, even back during that first time. Been a bad time, the kind that could stay with a man his whole life, if he wasn’t careful. It had shaped who he was, no getting around that, but once he’d been free, he’d decided to shut those memories away. That had been his choice, for better or worse. 

Been Blackstone, and the men they hired, that couldn’t forget. Couldn’t let other people forget either. 

The world’s changed, but not so much, not in some places. Over a hundred years later, and Sam was still born where people flew that damn flag, for a war they’d lost. Wasn’t even the _right_ flag. But people who think that way ain’t ever been known for being particularly bright, not to him, so he doesn’t know why he’s surprised they can’t even get that part right.

In this life, he’d joined the Army when he was just eighteen, determined to get himself the hell on out of there. He didn’t know where the Army would send him, just hoped it would be better than where he was. The pay and the health insurance had been a nice bonus. 

And finding Jack Horne of all people had been one too. He’d been expecting to find Goody first. That’s how it had gone last time, and he’d been looking, watching every white boy he saw, looking for that face. Imagine his surprise when it had been Jack instead, clean-shaven but still half-crazy, looking at Sam in the barracks hallway like he’d seen a ghost. 

A surprise, but not a bad one, not for Sam or Jack. Jack had stuck to his side like glue, and that had been good for Sam. Takes more than a hundred years for people to change in the ways Sam would like them to, but Jack had done his part to keep that kind away from Sam. He didn’t need the protection, had handled worse in both lives, but he’d appreciated it all the same. 

So Sam had done his part, too. Kept Jack on the level, in the way Jack needed, and when Jack had told him about the bartender just off base, the woman Jack was so sure was Raven, come around again too, well. Sam took care of that. 

Slowly, Sam had made this life good. As good as he could make it. Helping Jack and Raven get this place up and running, and tracking down their wayward friends, bringing them home. 

“Emma coming by today?” Goody asks. 

All their friends. 

He’d been looking for Emma Cullen as hard as he could, but it wasn’t easy. Her name wasn’t unique, and there was no way of knowing just how old she was this time around, or if she even was Emma Cullen just yet. No telling if she’d found her Matthew, or well. She’d always been an independent kind of woman, he’d suspected, and there was no cause for her to still take Matthew’s name if she had found him. 

Besides, there’d been a feeling he’d had that their story didn’t go that way. He found everyone, except for Red Harvest. Red Harvest had made his way to them, that first time, and he did this time too. That first time, Emma had tracked him down. Sam suspected that it was the way their story still had to play out. What do you know, he’d been right. She found them, followed that path fate had laid out, and stumbled right over them. 

“This evening,” Sam answers. “After Matthew gets off work.”

Goody chuckles. “Better warn Faraday.” 

Sam laughs too. Damn if Matthew ain’t the friendliest man Sam’s ever met, in either life. He’s bound and determined to be friends with all of them, even Faraday, though he ain’t too keen on it. Claims Matthew is ‘too much’. Sam thinks he might have a point, but Matthew doesn’t mean any harm. And there’s no sense in them not being friends. Matthew works at the hospital too now. 

In any case, Sam likes him. Always knew he would, if he’d gotten the chance to know him that last time. There had to be something to a man that a woman like Emma would burn down the world in vengeance for him. 

Sam knew more than a little about that kind of love, and the kind of people who inspired it. His sister, that first time, she’d had a spine made of iron forged, and the temperament to go with it. She’d been a fierce girl, determined to make their new life work. As for his mother, she’d been made of softer stuff, a gentle woman who’d believed in the best in the world, despite everything she’d been put through that should have beaten that out of her. He’d loved them both, loved them so much, but all the love in the world couldn’t save them or him. 

No, Sam had been saved by sheer dumb luck, when those men strung him up. Old rope, rotted, and the kind of men who were cruel and stupid enough to leave a body dangling instead of making sure he was dead. Sam had been struggling for breath, scared out of his mind, and angry, so angry it felt like it was burning him up, when the rope had snapped and he’d hit the ground. Had taken a long time, hours maybe, before he’d even tried standing up, his lungs and back aching, but alive. Alive amongst the dead hanging around him, and their still-burning homes. 

A long time ago, over a century, he had told that bloody story to Goody, and Goody had likened him to a phoenix. He’d had to tell Sam just what that was, the word and the story unfamiliar to him, but Sam had understood why once he had. Goody had always fixated on symbolism in that way, and birds in particular, just like he had with that owl he claimed was following him. 

Sam hadn’t thought one way or the other about the story, until Rose Creek. When he had enacted his own vengeance on Bogue, burned everything a man like Bogue valued right in front of him to the very ground, then Sam had liked the story a little more. And Emma Cullen had made sure Bogue wouldn’t be no phoenix of his own. 

History had not redeemed Bogue either. Sam’s looked, and found only footnotes and references. _Blackstone_ , the empire Bogue had built on blood and evil, the one he’d died for, has been swept away like so much dust, and just as easily forgotten. Instead, the Pinkertons came out as the winners. Would have killed Bogue all over again to know that, and Sam’s happy for it. 

He even found himself, when he looked hard enough. There’s not much about him, who he was, that first time. But he’d found his own name, and even some old photographs in a couple of books. Sam Chisolm, duly sworn warrant officer. It would be hard to say how old he was in most of them, photos not being what they are now, and for the life of him, he can only recall sitting for one of them. He’d brought in a whole gang of train-robbers, led by some little jumped-up nothing calling himself ‘Johnny Two-Shot’, and the paper had taken his picture. He’d been younger than he is now, and nervous as all hell to sit for a photograph of all things. His boss at the time, a good man named Walker, had paid for him to go to the barber and dressed Sam up in his own shirt and vest for it. 

_“Gotta give the ladies something to pin up on their mirrors,”_ he’d said to Sam, when Sam had tried to protest the whole thing, embarrassed over the attention, not sure what to do with it back then. . 

“So that’s all of us, then,” Goody says, sounding somewhat wistful. “Now what?”

“Now?” Sam’s spent a long time thinking about this, how it would be once he managed to track them all down. “Now, we get on with living.” He takes a hit, breathes out, thinking. “We’ve got the ranch. That’ll keep us settled for a while. And it’ll be here for y’all to come home too, if some of you get some wanderlust.” 

“Don’t think that’s going to happen,” Goody says, shaking his head. Sometimes, it’s a strange thing, to see Goody so young. Sam didn’t know him this young, that first time, and it’s a bit funny, to see his friend, who he knew as a grown man, as a kid. “Sam, we’re all fucking crazy.”

“You started off crazy,” Sam refutes, moving up on the bed so his back is against the wall, careful of his shoulder. “Don’t go blaming that on this.”

Goody laughs, and nods, pointing at Sam. “That’s true, can’t argue with that. Lord knows, I ain’t had both oars in the water for over a hundred years. But you know what I mean. We’re not like other people, least not no one else we know. The world ain’t quite right for us, this time around.” He sighs, uncrosses his legs and re-crosses them the other way. “Think we’re only right for one another. Besides that, I got all my ‘wanderlust’, as you say, out of my system the first time. I ain’t got nothing to be running from, this time around. No, I’m happy to put down some roots here, with you, and Billy.” 

“Your owl finally kicked the bucket?” 

“Oh, why you got to start with that?” He opens the top of his vape, and refills it, fiddling with the dropper. “I was half out of my head on opium and whiskey.” Once he’s got the top clicked back, he takes another hit. “I got a chest full of bullets, in any case. Guess that satisfied it.” 

Sam never doubted the owl was real, at least to Goody. He doubts it less, this time around. All sorts of things they can’t be asked to understand. “You fell off the roof, too.” Because that had happened. Trust Goody to be as dramatic as possible, even in death. 

“Yeah, well, I ain’t fallen off no roofs this time around. Vasquez has filled the quota for that one.” 

“He had to get Faraday’s attention somehow.” Sam thinks that even if he was like most people, he still wouldn’t have the slightest clue about what goes on between Vasquez and Faraday. They’re both just too much, and they shouldn’t work, but somehow, they cancel out each other’s worst qualities to make a functioning unit. 

They’d of been something terrible to behold that first time, the way they were then, the way men like them had to be back then. Sam thinks keeping them in line would have been a headache and a half. 

He’d still have changed things, if he could have. Kept Faraday alive, kept him with them. Because Vasquez had faded in a way, after Faraday had died. Like he’d burned out too soon, or just burned too bright, too fast, to keep on after. He’d still been himself, laughing and joking, but there’d been something missing. 

Some people are just like that, maybe, Sam thinks. They work better when they find the match to themselves, and don’t quite ever work the same when they’re alone again. Hell, Goody’s like that, Goody and Billy both. 

Sam thinks maybe he works in an entirely different way. He doesn’t need another person, not like that, but he needs people. These people. They’re crazy, but they’ve always been crazy, and together, they seem to pull together into something bigger, something stronger. Sam was never meant for just one person, but if one is inclined towards that way of thinking, which he is, he thinks he was meant for all of them and they were meant for him. A family of his own making and choosing. 

His shoulder ain’t bothering him no more, in any case, and he don’t feel like sitting in this room. “You think Faraday’s started on dinner?” If he has, they should keep well out of the kitchen. 

Goody leans over, looking at the door. “Maybe. It’s about that time. Him and Raven have got to be done going through that junk by now at least.” Feels like every time they spread a bit further out in the house, they find more boxes. There’s no sense in throwing it all out without at least looking through it, but damn if it doesn’t feel like Sisyphus’ boulder some days. 

Still, they’ve been making some good money on a lot of it. Raven’s grandmother might have been something of a hoarder, but she hoarded good things at least, things they can sell if they can’t use themselves. 

“What do you think he’s making?” Sam’s hoping for meat. Raven’s been fussy about that kind of thing here lately, though, and ain’t none of them looking to argue with her. 

“I don’t know, I just like that someone else is doing the cooking.” 

“Yeah, we all know we can’t trust you to do it and not kill folks,” Sam jokes, getting to his feet. 

“That is not my fault,” Goody grumbles. 

“Yeah, what’s your excuse this time around?” That does the trick, Goody sputtering something that’s probably a whole lot of nothing. “Come on, show me the dorm, tell me what you’re thinking.” He checks over his shoulder. “Nothing from Shakespeare.” 

It’s decent land that the ranch sits on. Not the best, but Raven’s grandparents had probably just been happy to have it. That’s something Sam can understand, wanting to own something when everything’s been denied to you your whole life, even your own personhood. But he can understand why her parents didn’t want it, too. They don’t keep much themselves, but they’ve got other sources of income to keep it up, so they don’t have to risk keeping cattle and other livestock. They can just be here and stay here. 

The dorm really ain’t much to look at. It’s not even much in the way of a building, these days. The roof is missing off half of it, and there was a fire at some point that’s smoked up one of the corners. Vasquez says the bones are good, but when and if they ever get to it, they’ll have to gut it. 

Sam don’t see the point. They don’t need any extra hands, and everyone who lives here is fine inside the main house. Vasquez and Faraday have an apartment in town anyway, so they’re squared away if they want privacy. Emma and Matthew do too, just a street over from them, by coincidence or luck. Both. Something else, even. 

It works for an art project though. Keeps Goody happy, and occupied. Even been getting him some attention from the right kind of people, and some commissions. He was always more suited for that kind of thing than being a soldier, and if it works out for him, Sam’s happy to see it. 

Red looks less happy, but that’s just his face. Always been his face. Even now, lying on a blanket on the ground, with his head in Teddy Q.’s lap, he looks fit to kill a man. 

“Hey,” Teddy Q. calls to them. “What brings y’all out here?” 

“Coming up with a new plan for this,” Sam says, putting a hand on Goody’s shoulder to keep him from mouthing off. “What about you, you got any suggestions?”

“Ain’t really my area,” he says. 

The times have changed, but they haven’t changed Teddy Q. The last time, Sam had thought that most of his quietness had been because he was trying to keep himself below notice. Men like him had to do that. People knew in Rose Creek, because people can be stupid, but they ain’t usually blind, but as long as men like him didn’t make a fuss, no one minded how Teddy Q. was. 

Now though, he just thinks that might be how he is regardless. He’s a steady man, reliable, and easy to get along with. Sam likes him, always has. He was hard not to like. And for Sam, finding people that genuinely didn’t seem to care who he was or what he was, had not been something that went unappreciated. 

Quakers were abolitionists to start with, in any case. Maybe people don’t realize what that meant these days, but it had allowed Sam a certain kind of comfort with Teddy Q. he didn’t have with a lot of white men. 

For all the difference in their ages now, where they are in their lives, he still feels that now with him. 

And for all he thought it was a stupid idea the last time, Sam appreciates the effect he has on Red. Red had earned himself a place in Sam’s heart over the years, become his brother in ways stronger than blood, and watching him, ever since he came out here to them, has been a hurt bothering at Sam. He’d been missing Teddy Q. something bad, and having him back seems to have done a world of good for him. Like he’s settled, easier with the world. 

Was just a stroke of luck that when he’d found his way to them, he brought Billy back to Goody’s side, too. 

Speaking of, Sam wonders where the hell Billy is, but gets his answer almost as soon as he thinks about it. There’s someone climbing down off the roof, using the drain pipe. “Got the measurements,” he says to Goody now, holding out a slip of paper. 

“We have ladders,” Sam drawls. 

“There’s a pipe,” Billy replies simply. 

“Yeah, I’ll be sure and have that put on your tombstone when you fall and break your fool neck.” Damn, but ain’t none of them got any sense. Ladders ain’t even that far away. 

Goody don’t take well to that comment, reaching and draping himself around Billy’s back, his face in the crook of Billy’s neck. “Don’t you listen to him, _cher_. Sam’s just feeling his age today.”

“I ain’t old.” He’s not even thirty yet, for chrissakes, and he was plenty fit when he was almost twice the age he is now. “You’re just a bunch of arrogant sons-of-bitches.” 

They’re not listening to him either, Goody forcing Billy to turn somewhat so he can look at Red. “What about Hemingway? Something with the sea -”

“No,” Red says flatly. 

Teddy Q. is shaking his head as well. “He doesn’t like Hemingway.” 

“Well how about you make me a list of what he does like, because I’m thinking it might be shorter,” Goody snaps. 

“ _I_ don’t like Hemingway,” Billy adds. 

Now Goody just looks offended. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, Billy. That’s the only way we can stay on friendly terms.” He still kisses Billy on the cheek, right in front of them all.

It’s not shocking, in this day and age. Wouldn’t have shocked Sam back then, either, but he never seemed able to care about that kind of thing. Things that weren’t his concern never really did. But back then, just that, or even just what Red and Teddy Q. are doing right now, would have been enough to get any of them killed. 

That worry though, that’s gone away. Goody can do that now, and Billy can let him. Sam was born a free man this time, and so were they, in another sense. 

Sam breathes in, rolls his good shoulder, and steps away from them all, his hands on hips as he looks up. The sky is so big here, so open. Coming out here has felt as close to he could come to that feeling he had when he, his mother, and his sister went to Nebraska. Out to Lincoln, and their own land, with names to call their own and no price next to them on a ledger. It hadn’t been called Lincoln, then. Lancaster. Was renamed not long after they got out there. 

That feeling hadn’t been allowed to last long, not that time. 

But this ain’t then. This is a new time, with new lives for all of them. 

Someone rings the bell on the porch, which means it’s time for dinner, and Sam heard a car on the gravel by the house, which would be Emma and Matthew, arriving just in time. Raven’s got rules about meal etiquette, and that includes being on time. 

Inside, Vasquez and Jack are still setting the table, Faraday and Raven getting everything set to go out. Matthew is trying to help, taking things from them when they hand them out. Emma seems fine sitting at the table, a bottle of beer in hand, but she hadn’t much liked cooking or the parts involved in it the first time. That chore had usually fallen mostly to Teddy Q. 

It’s stir-fry tonight, vegetarian and chicken. Sam’ll take it. He’ll take first dibs too, even if Vasquez makes a grabbing motion for it first. 

“Oh, come on, Sam,” he complains. 

“You know Dad eats first, babe,” Faraday says, smoothing Vasquez’s hair back from his head before he leans over and kisses Vasquez’s temple, taking the seat beside him. 

Vasquez huffs. “He’s not even old enough to be our father this time.” 

“Still older than you.” He passes it to Jack next anyway, just to fuck with Vasquez a little. “And it’s his house.” 

“Technically it’s Raven’s house,” Red Harvest points out.

“That’s right, it is, and you will not talk with food in your mouth at _my_ table,” she interjects, pointing at him. 

Emma scoffs. “Good luck with that.” 

“I got manners into Jack, didn’t I?” 

“That’s not my fault, sweetheart, I was in the Army.”

Sam doesn’t have much to say tonight, feeling a bit introspective, but it’s one of those nights where everyone else feels like talking, so no one pays him any mind. He likes listening to them, in any case, the sounds of all of them talking about their days, talking to one another, the dishes moving around. It’s calming, the way a house sounds when everything is as it should be. 

It’s his name up on rotation for dishes, but Emma volunteers to help him when Matthew goes outside with the rest of the boys, some conversation about soccer that Sam wasn’t paying any attention to having carried over.

“Matthew played soccer for the youth league,” Emma says, taking a pan from him and drying it before hanging it back on the rack over the bar. “He _loves_ it.”

“It’ll give him and Vasquez something to bond over,” Sam replies. “What about you? What’d you do in high school?” 

“Softball.”

He laughs, scrubbing at a spot on the pan he’s still got in the sink. “Put that aim of yours to good use?” 

“No, I played outfield,” she says. “Was mostly just for something to do. I liked being outside. Still do. Wouldn’t know it from my career choice, but I do. I only got into programming because of how much time I spent trying to find you, really.” 

They haven’t gotten much time to spend one-on-one, not yet. Daily life doesn’t much care about reunions, and bills still have to be paid, money earned. Dishes still have to be done. “You miss us that much?”

“I did.” She nudges his shin with her foot. “And you missed me.” 

He smiles at her, passes her the pan to dry. 

The first time, he’d seen so much of his sister in her. And Goody had been right, that Sam had let that make it personal, let himself get caught up in saving her and her town, where he hadn’t been able to do anything the first time against Bogue. It had been about him, too, though. He’d needed his own pound of flesh, to finally put that anger he’d carried for so long to rest. 

He’d needed to do it. He just hadn’t been prepared for what it would cost him, in the end, though he thought he was. 

But from those ashes, he picked up what was left of himself and his friends, and built something new, something good. The people rebuilt their town, and Sam found himself a home in that life. He hadn’t had it long, but he’d had it. Instead of anger, into this life he’d carried that hope that he could get it back, that they all could. 

The dishes done, the pair of them go out to join the others, where Vasquez is kicking around a soccer ball in the yard with Matthew, the ball catching on the scrubby land, but they’re doing alright. It’s summer, so it’s still mostly light outside, the sky just beginning to darken in the east, color starting to catch in the west. 

“Watch, this is going to turn into when you and Vasquez would start up with bottles,” Emma says. “Wasting bullets and running your damn mouths.” 

“I don’t remember running my mouth,” Sam says, a blatant lie. 

“Bullshit,” she drawls. 

“You know, what I do remember is you out there with us, wasting bullets.” 

Wasn’t like there was much to entertain, so Sam doesn’t think it can be held against them, wasted bullets are not. Besides, they had more cause than most to stay in practice. Most bounties didn’t exactly want to come along willingly. Well, there had been that one, but it had been the dead of winter, up in the mountains, and his other option was freezing to death. He’d opted to come along quietly instead. 

Red had been somewhat disappointed on that one, but that was because they’d been tracking the man through rough terrain for two weeks by then. He’d been looking to hit someone. Vasquez had just been happy to be done, and get off the damn mountain. 

Hadn’t been long after that. The very next job, if Sam remembered right. That was when that cattle rustler had gotten off that lucky shot, hit Vasquez right in the thigh. He’d bled out quick at least, a mercy. 

Red had slit the cattle rustler’s throat for it. So maybe not so lucky for him after all. 

Here and now, Vasquez is cussing up a storm because Matthew’s managed to get the ball away from him. 

In the here and now, when it’s just Sam still sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette, everyone else having gone on home or to bed, he doesn’t think about Vasquez dying, or the rest of them. He thought about that enough the first time. 

He thinks about his own death. He’d lived so much longer than he ever thought he would. Really, there were at least two dozen skirmishes and scuffles he can think of just off the top of his head that he shouldn’t have walked away from. In all honesty, he’d thought he’d die at Rose Creek, had been sure that would be it. 

Hadn’t been much. One bullet, in a bad spot. Him and Red Harvest were too far away from any help to be had, and it had been a gut shot anyway. Even if he had gotten help, infection probably would have gotten him. When Red Harvest had seen, Sam had known he knew too. Sam wasn’t making it much of anywhere except dead. Too cold to bury him, and too far to take his body back, too. 

Red Harvest had lashed him to his horse, and ridden them both out further, and Sam knew why. Had been alright with it. He’d still been alive, somewhat, when Red Harvest found the cave to rest him in, still alive enough to think. Red Harvest had been saying something in Comanche, maybe a song, or maybe just talking. Sam was never too clear on what they did for their dead. 

He’d thought though, there, at the end, how sorry he was to leave Red Harvest to ride back alone. Wasn’t safe for him, most of the time. Wouldn’t be safe for any of the three left, with him gone. Someone would eventually take issue with the rumors Sam had heard, the ones about Teddy Q. and Red Harvest, and they’d take it up with one of them. Or the soldiers would find Red Harvest, take him away like so many of his kin, to somewhere else, if he even lived through the journey. Emma would be a woman alone, one who’d kept strange company and done strange things. 

And Sam wouldn’t be there, with his badge and his gun, to keep those threats away. 

Blood loss had been making his head do funny things. Sam’s always been sure there’s something else pulling the strings on everything, but he’s never been so arrogant to think he knows who’s right about who it is. He always just figured he’d pay his respects to any gods he met, and hope that earned him some favor. 

He’d been dying, feeling himself slipping away, when he’d asked the one thing of any god he’d asked for in well over twenty years, since the day he got out of that noose. He’d asked for another chance. Another chance, for all of them, to get it right. If they could have another chance, in kinder times, he’d do his best to get it right. Keep them safe. 

Some god had been listening, apparently. Maybe it was Red Harvest’s, looking to protect one of theirs the only way they still could. Maybe some god none of them know just yet. 

Whoever, or whatever, had chosen to listen to him, he hasn’t taken it for granted. He made a promise, as he died. To find them, and do it right this time. That they would not be lost again in this world.

He takes a hit, breathes out smoke into the night air. 

“What I lost in the fire,” he says out loud, to no one in particular, except maybe whoever had heard him that last time, and listened. Listened to a dying man, and the love in him for his family. "I have found it in the ashes."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and that's it.


End file.
